Thulani
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Thulani is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 74th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and English (South Africa), written in the Latin script.
- ZASouth Africa1 in 1.3K◐
- SZEswatini1 in 357
- ZWZimbabwe1 in 19K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈9 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 61 ●
- 1 in 4.3M ◐
across 1 country
recorded for this name
27K records
Official registry-verified
Poland
Spellings & scripts●
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
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 | #74 | 25,924 | 26K rec. | — | — | Thulani | 61 |
| US United States | — | 309 | 286 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 58 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 146 | 112 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 30 |
| AU Australia | — | 74 | 66 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 23 |
| ZW Zimbabwe | #888 | 45 | 21 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 13 |
| LK Sri Lanka | — | 31 | 111 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 10 |
| SZ Eswatini | #13 | 17 | 16 rec. | — | 30 | Thulani | 8 |
| DE Germany | — | 16 | 16 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 10 |
| PL Poland | — | 9 | — | 1 in 4.3M | 9 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 9 | 4 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 7 |
| CA Canada | — | 9 | 10 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 4 |
| ZM Zambia | — | 7 | 3 rec. | — | — | Thulani | 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●
- English16K49%
- English (South Africa)5.2K16%
- Swahili4.7K14%
- Dutch8683%
- Southern Sotho7232%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 15,827 | 49% |
| English (South Africa) | 5,150 | 16% |
| Swahili | 4,665 | 14% |
| Dutch | 868 | 3% |
| Southern Sotho | 723 | 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●
Thulani 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 Zulu, be quiet
as a nameKoopman, Adrian. Zulu Names (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2002)
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●
- Thulani Davisb. 1949USAmerican writer (born 1949)
- Thulani Malingab. 1955ZASouth African boxer
- Thulani Masekob. 1970SZSwazi human right lawyer and activist (1970–2023)
- Thulani Victor Mbuyisab. 1973South African Catholic prelate
- Thulani Ben Hlatshwayob. 1995ZASouth African Actor
- Thulani Nyembeactor
- Thulani MakhalanyaneZASouth African ecologist
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 7 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SZ Eswatini | Eswatini EBC 2023 Secondary Elections candidate ballots | 2023 | 30 | #11 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20) | 2026 | 9 | #11,800 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 7 | #12,171 |
| NL Netherlands | Babynamen — Lijst met meer dan 22.000 namen (Amelia King, 2020) | — | — | — |
| SZ Eswatini | The page lists the top 100 traditional Eswatini names along with their meanings and cultural significance, provided by K | — | — | #17 |
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 · 5 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Thulani?
- We estimate roughly 9 people bear Thulani (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
- In which country does Thulani have the most bearers?
- Thulani is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled thulani.
- How common is Thulani compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Thulani is the 74th most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
- Is Thulani a male or female name?
- Thulani 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.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/thulaniThe 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, “Thulani” — the 74th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.