Zainabu
given name · Swahili · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Zainabu is a given name, most frequently recorded in Tanzania, where it is the 23rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Swahili and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Swahili: 'beautiful'; refers to Muhammad’s eldest daughter.
- TZTanzania1 in 489◐
- KEKenya1 in 3.5K
- MWMalawi1 in 2.1K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈17 ●
- Sources
- 52 ●
- 1 in 600K ◐
across 1 country
11K records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Meaning & origin●
Swahili: 'beautiful'; refers to Muhammad’s eldest daughter.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TZ Tanzania | #23 | 27,113 | 7.7K rec. | — | 2 | Zainabu | 28 |
| KE Kenya | #378 | 8,182 | 738 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 24 |
| NG Nigeria | — | 859 | 1.6K rec. | — | listed | Zainabu | 18 |
| US United States | — | 489 | 571 rec. | — | listed | Zainabu | 52 |
| MW Malawi | #228 | 199 | 0 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 3 |
| UG Uganda | #275 | 69 | 34 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 11 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 42 | 40 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 13 |
| AU Australia | — | 32 | 32 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 7 |
| FR France | — | 31 | 27 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 16 |
| EG Egypt | — | 26 | 24 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 6 |
| GH Ghana | — | 20 | 31 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 6 |
| CA Canada | — | 19 | 29 rec. | — | — | Zainabu | 3 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Swahili30K80%
- English4.5K12%
- French7272%
- Arabic5762%
- Indonesian5251%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Swahili | 30,095 | 80% |
| English | 4,462 | 12% |
| French | 727 | 2% |
| Arabic | 576 | 2% |
| Indonesian | 525 | 1% |
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●
Zainabu is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Arabic, Zaynab; Arabic name
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Beautiful.
as a nameThe African book of names
In Hausa, Zaynab (the daughter and granddaughter of Muhammad)
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●
- Zainabu Mussa Bakarb. 1985TZTanzanian politician
- Zainabu Mohamedb. 2006TZTanzanian female football 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 8 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 17 | #26,713 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 4 | #28,147 |
| TZ Tanzania | INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results | 2020 | 2 | #11 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1 | #77,430 |
| NG Nigeria | The African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | A Handbook of African Names (Asante, 1976) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement) | — | — | — |
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 · 7 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Zainabu?
- We estimate roughly 17 people bear Zainabu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 1 country in our records.
- In which country does Zainabu have the most bearers?
- Zainabu is most frequently recorded in Tanzania, where it is most often spelled zainabu.
- How common is Zainabu compared with other names?
- In Tanzania, Zainabu is the 23rd most common given name of 40,746 given names recorded there.
- Is Zainabu a male or female name?
- Zainabu is a female 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 Zainabu mean?
- Recorded meaning: Swahili: 'beautiful'; refers to Muhammad’s eldest daughter.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/zainabuThe 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, “Zainabu” — the 23rd most common given name in Tanzania. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.