Kulwa
given name · Swahili · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kulwa is a given name, most frequently recorded in Tanzania, where it is the 64th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Swahili and English, written in the Latin script.
- TZTanzania1 in 1.2K◐
- KEKenya1 in 60K
- ZASouth Africa1 in 5.7M
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- 13K ●
- Sources
- 32 ●
in 5 countries
8.1K records
Official registry-verified
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #64 | 10,824 | 7.9K rec. | — | — | Kulwa | 32 |
| KE Kenya | — | 484 | 12 rec. | — | — | Kulwa | 7 |
| US United States | — | 43 | 81 rec. | — | listed | Kulwa | 14 |
| IN India | — | 18 | 0 rec. | — | 14 | Kulwa | 5 |
| FR France | — | 10 | 15 rec. | — | — | Kulwa | 10 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 6 | 26 rec. | — | — | Kulwa | 5 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Swahili8.5K64%
- English1.6K12%
- Hindi1.1K8%
- Japanese6785%
- Arabic2082%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Swahili | 8,546 | 64% |
| English | 1,559 | 12% |
| Hindi | 1,073 | 8% |
| Japanese | 678 | 5% |
| Arabic | 208 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Kulwa is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In kr, a. full of holes, perforated
as a wordKanuri-English Vocabulary (in African Native Literature)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 1 |
| 1926 | 2 |
| 1928 | 1 |
| 1931 | 3 |
| 1932 | 1 |
| 1933 | 1 |
| 1934 | 1 |
| 1935 | 1 |
| 1936 | 1 |
| 1938 | 6 |
| 1939 | 1 |
| 1941 | 2 |
| 1942 | 2 |
| 1943 | 2 |
| 1944 | 5 |
| 1945 | 8 |
| 1946 | 5 |
| 1947 | 5 |
| 1948 | 2 |
| 1949 | 4 |
| 1950 | 2 |
| 1951 | 3 |
| 1952 | 2 |
| 1953 | 5 |
| 1954 | 6 |
| 1955 | 8 |
| 1956 | 6 |
| 1957 | 7 |
| 1958 | 7 |
| 1959 | 12 |
| 1960 | 6 |
| 1961 | 14 |
| 1962 | 13 |
| 1963 | 12 |
| 1964 | 10 |
| 1965 | 12 |
| 1966 | 8 |
| 1967 | 12 |
| 1968 | 17 |
| 1969 | 5 |
| 1970 | 12 |
| 1971 | 12 |
| 1972 | 12 |
| 1973 | 9 |
| 1974 | 14 |
| 1975 | 7 |
| 1976 | 8 |
| 1977 | 10 |
| 1978 | 8 |
| 1979 | 10 |
| 1980 | 6 |
| 1981 | 6 |
| 1982 | 8 |
| 1983 | 6 |
| 1984 | 7 |
| 1985 | 3 |
| 1986 | 1 |
| 1987 | 6 |
| 1988 | 1 |
| 1989 | 2 |
| 1990 | 3 |
| 1991 | 1 |
| 1992 | 1 |
| 1993 | 1 |
| 1995 | 2 |
| 1997 | 1 |
| 1998 | 2 |
| 2008 | 1 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 1 |
IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 72 years between 1897–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Evidence●
Attested in 3 sources across 2 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 94 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Kulwa?
- Our records include 13,227 bearers of Kulwa across 5 countries — a sample of the full distribution.
- In which country does Kulwa have the most bearers?
- Kulwa is most frequently recorded in Tanzania, where it is most often spelled kulwa.
- How common is Kulwa compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Kulwa is the 64th most common given name of 40,746 given names recorded there.
- Is Kulwa a male or female name?
- Kulwa is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kulwaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Kulwa” — the 64th most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.