Thapelo
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Thapelo is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa. In Botswana it is the 19th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Southern Sotho, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: prayer.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 1.7K◐
- BWBotswana1 in 2.3K
- LSLesotho1 in 39K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈2 ●
- Sources
- 68 ●
- 1 in 19M ◐
across 1 country
21K records
Official registry-verified
Poland
Meaning & origin●
prayer
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 | #114 | 20,273 | 21K rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 68 |
| US United States | — | 166 | 134 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 28 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 51 | 36 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 21 |
| AU Australia | — | 39 | 39 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 8 |
| BW Botswana | #19 | 36 | 123 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 18 |
| LS Lesotho | #27 | 24 | 28 rec. | — | 13 | Thapelo | 7 |
| DE Germany | — | 6 | 6 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 3 |
| IN India | — | 5 | 3 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 5 |
| FR France | — | 5 | 6 rec. | — | — | Thapelo | 2 |
| PL Poland | — | 2 | — | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
| SZ Eswatini | — | — | 2 rec. | — | 1 | — | 1 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English8.4K37%
- Southern Sotho7.5K33%
- Swahili2.5K11%
- English (South Africa)1.4K6%
- Dutch5282%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 8,369 | 37% |
| Southern Sotho | 7,455 | 33% |
| Swahili | 2,533 | 11% |
| English (South Africa) | 1,426 | 6% |
| Dutch | 528 | 2% |
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●
- Thapelo Mokoenab. 1982ZASouth African actor
- Thapelo Mokheleb. 1986LSMosotho footballer
- Thapelo Taleb. 1988LSMosotho footballer
- Thapelo Phorab. 1991ZASouth African male sprinter
- Thapelo Letsholob. 1992ZASouth African cricketer
- Thapelo Monaiwab. 1998Botswanan athletics competitor (born 1998)
- Thapelo AmadSouth African politician
- Thapelo Dorothy ChiloaneSouth African 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 6 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LS Lesotho | Lesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists | 2022 | 13 | #9 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #27,302 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 2 | #27,303 |
| SZ Eswatini | Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots | 2023 | 1 | #38 |
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 · 4 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Thapelo?
- We estimate roughly 2 people bear Thapelo (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
- In which country does Thapelo have the most bearers?
- Thapelo is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled thapelo.
- How common is Thapelo compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Thapelo is the 114th most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
- Is Thapelo a male or female name?
- Thapelo 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 Thapelo mean?
- Recorded meaning: prayer
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/thapeloThe 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, “Thapelo” — the 114th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.