Lerato

given name · English · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Lerato is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 49th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and English (South Africa), written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: love.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa1 in 1.1K◐
  • LSLesotho1 in 23K
  • GYGuyana1 in 375K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈38 ●

across 5 countries

Sources
77 ●

32K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 375K ◐

Guyana

Meaning & origin●

love

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Lerato is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#4930,65831K rec.——Lerato77
US United States—407313 rec.——Lerato52
GB United Kingdom—12795 rec.—listedLerato31
AU Australia—4367 rec.—1Lerato14
LS Lesotho#124023 rec.—10Lerato12
DE Germany—4035 rec.——Lerato21
FR France—2424 rec.——Lerato10
SE Sweden—19△3 rec.1 in 537K19—2
CA Canada—1419 rec.——Lerato10
NG Nigeria—1212 rec.—listedLerato8
IN India—82 rec.——Lerato3
BE Belgium—78 rec.——Lerato5

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English16K40%
  • English (South Africa)5.9K15%
  • Southern Sotho5.1K13%
  • Swahili4.5K11%
  • Dutch9422%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English15,54440%
English (South Africa)5,93015%
Southern Sotho5,12113%
Swahili4,45211%
Dutch9422%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Lerato is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian given name53 records spelled Lerato4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Лерато

26 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name●

1970198019902000Lerato Shadi, b. 1979Lerato Mbele, b. 1990Lerato Kgasago, b. 1991Lerato Sechele, b. 1994Lerato Mokoka, b. 1996Lerato Makua, b. 1999

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 15 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Lerato
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—25#20,302
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—25#21,739
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—19#25,616
LS LesothoLesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists202210#11
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—6#10,082
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20266#10,083
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—6#24,300
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—5—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—5#34,383
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20244#118,617
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520252#592
NA NamibiaECN Government Gazette 8791 — 2025 local authority candidates20251#23

Reference works 1

  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 16 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lerato?
We estimate roughly 38 people bear Lerato (counting its spellings and scripts) across 5 countries in our records.
In which country does Lerato have the most bearers?
Lerato is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled lerato.
How common is Lerato compared with other names?
In South Africa, Lerato is the 49th most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
Is Lerato a male or female name?
Lerato is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Lerato mean?
Recorded meaning: love
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lerato

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Lerato” — the 49th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lerato parses inside a full name →