Obama

surname · English · Latin script

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

Obama is a surname, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country. In Equatorial Guinea it is the 8th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: An African surname from Luo.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 90K
  • GQEquatorial Guinea1 in 90
  • GNGuinea1 in 2.4K

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

≈763

across 5 countries

Sources
98

1.6K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 90K

Spain

Meaning & origin

An African surname from Luo.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

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

Where Obama is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain554484 rec.1 in 90K554Obama47
FR France554502 rec.Obama98
US United States159109 rec.1 in 2.1M159Obama48
GQ Equatorial Guinea#895135 rec.110Obama17
BR Brazil361 in 5.9M36
AR Argentina2730 rec.Obama4
CM Cameroon2438 rec.Obama10
CL Chile2423 rec.Obama3
CO Colombia2222 rec.Obama7
MX Mexico2020 rec.Obama5
CN China162 rec.Obama4
PE Peru136 rec.Obama4

Roughly 554 people in Spain bear this name (about 1 in 90K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages

  • English7K50%
  • Spanish1.9K14%
  • Polish1.5K11%
  • Swahili9197%
  • French6475%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English7,01250%
Spanish1,93814%
Polish1,49811%
Swahili9197%
French6475%

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

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

  • Polish surname2.2K records spelled Obama9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Spain, Czechia, United States

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Bulgarian

    Also written Обама

44 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.

Other recorded senses

Obama is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swahili, a surname from Luo

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Serbo-Croatian, masculine/neuter dative/locative/instrumental of ȍba

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, the 44ᵗʰ president of the USA; Obama

    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

192019401960198020002020Barack Obama, b. 1934Francisco Pascual Obama Asue, b. 1949Malik Obama, b. 1958Auma Obama, b. 1960Barack Obama, b. 1961Ricardo Mangue Obama Nfubea, b. 1961Michelle Obama, b. 1964Bernard Obama, b. 1970Malia Obama, b. 1998Sasha Obama, b. 2001

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 23 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Obama
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)554#7,363
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)554#7,356
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010159#110,825
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020129#135,344
GQ Equatorial GuineaThis page provides a list of common names and surnames in Equatorial Guinea.2023110#10
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)36#131,575
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)18#20,186
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)200916
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)200814
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202412#53,184
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)12#33,140
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)6#24,300

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 · 26 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Obama?
We estimate roughly 763 people bear Obama (counting its spellings and scripts) across 5 countries in our records.
In which country does Obama have the most bearers?
We estimate about 554 people bear Obama in Spain, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled obama.
How common is Obama compared with other names?
In Equatorial Guinea, Obama is the 8th most common surname of 199 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Obama mean?
Recorded meaning: An African surname from Luo.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/obama

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, “Obama” — the 8th most common surname in Equatorial Guinea. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Obama parses inside a full name →