Names of Cape Verde CV

The names that most distinguish Cape Verde from the rest of the world are Semedo, Afonso and Benedita; in our record corpus the commonest names held in Cape Verde are James and Tavares.

Written in Portuguese.

Population: 583K
Official registers: 3
Name forms recorded: 1.1K

BBuilt from 3 official registers, 1,093 name forms in our corpus, 3 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share

Where the names most characteristic of Cape Verde are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Cape Verde included.

How names work in Cape Verde

2 naming traditions are in use in Cape Verde, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Cape Verde

Characteristic of Cape Verde

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Cape Verde holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

AfonsoBeneditaLeonorJamesMatildeSusanKathleenGaryLisaCarolDonnaKennethJeffreyDorothyScottDianeLarryKimberlyBettyCherylJasonJulieJanetSantiago

Sized by how much of the difference between Cape Verde's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Scripts & spelling

The best-attested names in Cape Verde, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

CNE — Listas concorrentes (Eleicoes Legislativas 2026)2026not a population count
Comissao Nacional de Eleicoes (CNE), via Boletim Oficial (INCV). Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 359 forms. 2026. Licence: Open government data.
What we know about this register
Legislative 2026 candidate lists (Edital 02) from Boletim Oficial; 556 candidates -> 496 name rows (359 given, 137 surname); Portuguese full names, given=first token surname=last non-connector token; no sex column. NO LIVE PER-NAME SEARCH FORM FOUND (2026-08-06): checked INE Cabo Verde (ine.cv, only aggregate publications, no onomastics tool), DGRNI (Direção Geral dos Registos, Notariado e Identificação, justica.gov.cv/dgrni and rni.cv — the civil-registry authority; its "estatistica" page is an empty placeholder, rniapps.cv is appointment-scheduling only) and SNIAC (sniac.cv, national ID/passport system, purely informational). None expose a per-name query of any kind, confirming there is no Cabo Verde equivalent to the withdrawn Portugal-IRN misfiling — the country's own apparatus simply has nothing.
Last verified 2026-07-02.
This page is a background note on Cape Verde published by the U.S. Department of State.2006not a population count
2009-2017.state.gov. Counts: not recorded. given. 4 forms. 2006. Licence: unknown.
What we know about this register
Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page is a background note on Cape Verde published by the U.S. Department of State.
Last verified 2026-05-11.
Discussion on Cape Verdean names in a Reddit thread on r/CapeVerde.2023not a population count
www.reddit.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 7 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.
What we know about this register
Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. Discussion on Cape Verdean names in a Reddit thread on r/CapeVerde.
Last verified 2026-05-11.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

Is there one naming system in Cape Verde?: No — 2 are described on this page (Portuguese, Tetum), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Cape Verde”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/CV (data snapshot 2026-09-12).