Ngoma
surname · bem · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ngoma is a surname, most frequently recorded in Zambia. In the Congo - Kinshasa it is the most common surname. It appears chiefly in bem and Swahili, written in the Latin script.
- CDCongo - Kinshasa1 in 472◐
- ZMZambia1 in 1.3K
- TZTanzania1 in 6.5K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈483 ●
- Sources
- 165 ●
- 1 in 161K ◐
across 12 countries
17K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZM Zambia | #123 | 6,574 | 229 rec. | — | 90K | Ngoma | 44 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #1 | 5,448 | 5.6K rec. | — | 3 | Ngoma | 22 |
| ZA South Africa | — | 2,515 | 2.5K rec. | — | listed | Ngoma | 42 |
| TZ Tanzania | #410 | 1,338 | 386 rec. | — | — | Ngoma | 25 |
| KE Kenya | — | 1,252 | 136 rec. | — | — | Ngoma | 11 |
| CG Congo - Brazzaville | #1 | 382 | 390 rec. | — | — | Ngoma | 19 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 270 | 113 rec. | — | — | Ngoma | 40 |
| MW Malawi | #192 | 250 | 17 rec. | — | 1 | Ngoma | 18 |
| GA Gabon | #81 | 221 | 109 rec. | — | 104 | Ngoma | 26 |
| US United States | — | 149 | 807 rec. | 1 in 2.2M | 329 | Ngoma | 98 |
| FR France | — | 89 | 5.4K rec. | 1 in 762K | 89 | Ngoma | 165 |
| AO Angola | #492 | 71 | 261 rec. | — | — | Ngoma | 14 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- bem90K72%
- Swahili12K10%
- French12K10%
- English4.9K4%
- Vietnamese1K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| bem | 89,525 | 72% |
| Swahili | 12,134 | 10% |
| French | 11,962 | 10% |
| English | 4,945 | 4% |
| Vietnamese | 1,012 | 1% |
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●
Ngoma is also recorded in 6 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In umb, a kind of mushroom. *Nia% v. a., vacuate the faeces
as a wordVocabulary of the Umbundu Language
In English, A large social dancing event in parts of Africa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Shona, drum (musical instrument)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ki, spirit of the deceased
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Southern Sotho, to clasp, to buckle
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tum, maize, corn
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
Notable people with this name●
- Kool Matopéb. 1965CDnot in their usual nameCongolese singer
- Leonard Ngomab. 1979ZMZambian swimmer
- Jean-Willy Ngomab. 1990CDfootball agent
- Fabrice Ngomab. 1994CDCongolese association football player
- Serge Ngomab. 2005USAmerican soccer player
- Alice NgomaMWMalawian politician
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 25 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZM Zambia | Zambia top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 90K | #21 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 329 | #65,168 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 149 | #116,829 |
| GA Gabon | Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative) | 2025 | 104 | #23 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 89 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 53 | #25,003 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 48 | #19,268 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 34 | #32,609 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 31 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #42,016 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 27 | #20,512 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 27 | #69,240 |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 · 39 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Ngoma?
- We estimate roughly 483 people bear Ngoma (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Ngoma have the most bearers?
- Ngoma is most frequently recorded in Zambia, where it is most often spelled ngoma.
- How common is Ngoma compared with other names?
- In Zambia, Ngoma is the 123rd most common surname of 15,244 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ngomaThe 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, “Ngoma” — the 123rd most common surname in Zambia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.