Thabo
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Thabo is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 9th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Southern Sotho, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Joy.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 496◐
- BWBotswana1 in 1.2K
- LSLesotho1 in 7.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈67 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 94 ●
- 1 in 464K ◐
across 5 countries
recorded for this name
72K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Tabo in TH Thailand, PH Philippines.
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●
Joy.
Sources 1
- The African book of names
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #9 | 68,321 | 71K rec. | — | — | Thabo | 94 |
| US United States | — | 661 | 517 rec. | — | listed | Thabo | 81 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 259 | 191 rec. | — | — | Thabo | 42 |
| LS Lesotho | #1 | 130 | 36 rec. | — | 23 | Thabo | 12 |
| AU Australia | — | 82 | 82 rec. | — | 1 | Thabo | 21 |
| BW Botswana | #9 | 66 | 279 rec. | — | — | Thabo | 26 |
| DE Germany | — | 65 | 41 rec. | — | listed | Thabo | 31 |
| IN India | — | 62 | 75 rec. | — | 122 | Thabo | 8 |
| ZM Zambia | — | 27 | 13 rec. | — | 3 | Thabo | 8 |
| TH Thailand | — | 24 | 23 rec. | — | #247,996 | Tabo | 10 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 23 | 28 rec. | 1 in 751K | 23 | Thabo | 9 |
| CA Canada | — | 23 | 28 rec. | — | — | Thabo | 10 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English33K43%
- Southern Sotho11K15%
- Swahili8.9K12%
- English (South Africa)5.7K7%
- French3.3K4%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 32,834 | 43% |
| Southern Sotho | 11,209 | 15% |
| Swahili | 8,902 | 12% |
| English (South Africa) | 5,699 | 7% |
| French | 3,264 | 4% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Notable people with this name●
- Thabo Mbekib. 1942ZAPresident of South Africa from 1999 to 2008
- Thabo Makgobab. 1960ZASouth African bishop
- Thabo Mngomenib. 1969ZASouth African footballer
- Thabo Mookib. 1974ZAAssociation footballer
- Thabo Septemberb. 1982ZAAssociation footballer
- Thabo Sefoloshab. 1984CHSwiss basketball player (born 1984)
- Thabo Nthetheb. 1984ZAAssociation footballer
- Thabo Mongalob. 1984ZAAssociation footballer
- Thabo Matlabab. 1987ZAassociation football player
- Thabo Qalingeb. 1991ZASouth African footballer
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 24 sources across 14 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 · 45 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Thabo?
- We estimate roughly 67 people bear Thabo (counting its spellings and scripts) across 5 countries in our records.
- In which country does Thabo have the most bearers?
- Thabo is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled thabo.
- How common is Thabo compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Thabo is the 9th most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
- Is Thabo a male or female name?
- Thabo 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 Thabo mean?
- Recorded meaning: Joy.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/thaboThe 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, “Thabo” — the 9th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.