Shongwe
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Shongwe is a surname, most frequently recorded in South Africa. In Eswatini it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 1.7K◐
- SZEswatini1 in 76
- MNMongolia1 in 194K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈2 ●
- Sources
- 72 ●
- 1 in 19M ◐
across 1 country
18K records
Official registry-verified
Poland
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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #101 | 17,765 | 18K rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 72 |
| US United States | — | 209 | 200 rec. | — | listed | Shongwe | 54 |
| SZ Eswatini | #4 | 82 | 91 rec. | — | 106 | Shongwe | 23 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 58 | 59 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 27 |
| KE Kenya | — | 35 | 12 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 5 |
| AU Australia | — | 29 | 29 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 11 |
| DE Germany | — | 12 | 12 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 8 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | 12 | 4 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 5 |
| MN Mongolia | — | 10 | 10 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 1 |
| HU Hungary | — | 9 | 9 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 1 |
| CA Canada | — | 6 | 4 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 7 |
| FR France | — | 6 | 5 rec. | — | — | Shongwe | 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●
- English12K58%
- Swahili2.6K13%
- English (South Africa)2K10%
- Hungarian8644%
- Hindi4582%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 11,980 | 58% |
| Swahili | 2,610 | 13% |
| English (South Africa) | 2,016 | 10% |
| Hungarian | 864 | 4% |
| Hindi | 458 | 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●
Shongwe 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 ss, Founding Swazi clan said to originate from Zululand.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
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●
- Dzeliwe of Eswatinib. 1927SZnot in their usual nameSwazi queen (1927-2003)
- Jeremiah Shongweb. 1948ZASouth African judge
- Abel Shongweb. 1966SZSwazi footballer
- Myron Shongweb. 1981ZAAssociation footballer
- Sidumo Shongweb. 1981SZSwazi footballer
- Lungile Shongweb. 1983ZASouth African actor
- Jabulani Shongweb. 1990ZASouth African footballer
- Wendy Shongweb. 2003ZASouth African soccer player
- Xolane ShongweZAcricketer
- Sibusiso ShongweSouth African rugby union player
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 4 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SZ Eswatini | Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots | 2023 | 106 | #4 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #393,640 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #385,830 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 6 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Shongwe?
- We estimate roughly 2 people bear Shongwe (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
- In which country does Shongwe have the most bearers?
- Shongwe is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled shongwe.
- How common is Shongwe compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Shongwe is the 101st most common surname of 302,267 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shongweThe 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, “Shongwe” — the 101st most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.