Sipho
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sipho is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 17th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Swahili, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A gift.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 676◐
- SZEswatini1 in 209
- MZMozambique1 in 21K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈36 ●
- Sources
- 78 ●
- 1 in 750K ◐
across 6 countries
52K records
Official registry-verified
Guyana
Meaning & origin●
A gift
Sources 1
- The book of African names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #17 | 50,125 | 51K rec. | — | — | Sipho | 78 |
| US United States | — | 591 | 1.3K rec. | — | 103 | Sipho | 56 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 160 | 124 rec. | — | listed | Sipho | 41 |
| AU Australia | — | 79 | 69 rec. | — | 1 | Sipho | 25 |
| DE Germany | — | 40 | 44 rec. | — | listed | Sipho | 24 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | — | 30 | 18 rec. | — | — | Sipho | 14 |
| SZ Eswatini | #5 | 29 | 24 rec. | — | 42 | Sipho | 13 |
| CA Canada | — | 26 | 33 rec. | — | — | Sipho | 15 |
| ZM Zambia | — | 24 | 7 rec. | — | — | Sipho | 10 |
| FR France | — | 24 | 29 rec. | — | — | Sipho | 17 |
| IN India | — | 12 | 10 rec. | — | — | Sipho | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 11 | 11 rec. | 1 in 1.6M | 11 | Sipho | 6 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English32K54%
- Swahili8.8K15%
- English (South Africa)7.4K12%
- Dutch1.7K3%
- Southern Sotho1.6K3%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 32,045 | 54% |
| Swahili | 8,785 | 15% |
| English (South Africa) | 7,412 | 12% |
| Dutch | 1,732 | 3% |
| Southern Sotho | 1,585 | 3% |
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●
Sipho is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A great gift.
as a nameThe African book of names
In Zulu, simple singular of ísiphó
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, a siphon or tube
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ss, gift
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●
- Sipho Thwalab. 1968ZASouth African rapist and serial killer
- Sipho Sibiyab. 1971CACanadian soccer player
- Sipho Mumbib. 1979ZMZambian footballer
- Sipho Mabonab. 1980CHSwiss origami artist
- Sipho Moyob. 1981ZWZimbabwean economist
- Sipho Mngomezulub. 1982ZASouth African football defender
- Sipho Chaineb. 1996ZAfootball player
- Sipho Mbuleb. 1998ZASouth African soccer player
- Sipho NgwenyaZASouth African politician
- Sipho JeleSwazi activist
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 21 sources across 13 countries.
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia given-name 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 · 20 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Sipho?
- We estimate roughly 36 people bear Sipho (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
- In which country does Sipho have the most bearers?
- Sipho is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled sipho.
- How common is Sipho compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Sipho is the 17th most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
- Is Sipho a male or female name?
- Sipho is a male 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 Sipho mean?
- Recorded meaning: A gift
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/siphoThe 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, “Sipho” — the 17th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.