Names of Gambia GM

The names that most distinguish the Gambia from the rest of the world are Lamin, Jallow and Njie.

Written in English.

Population
2.2M
Official registers
6
Name forms recorded
85
BBuilt from 6 official registers, 85 name forms in our corpus, 10 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 Gambia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Gambia included.

How names work in Gambia

2 naming traditions are in use in Gambia, 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 Gambia

Characteristic of Gambia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Gambia 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.

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

Scripts & spelling

Jallowsurname●
Lamingiven name●
Njiesurname●
Ousmangiven name●
Jobesurname●
The best-attested names in Gambia, 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

  • IEC — Nominated Candidates National Assembly Elections 20222022not a population count

    Independent Electoral Commission (IEC, The Gambia). Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 134 forms. 2022. Licence: Open government data.

    What we know about this register

    Inline HTML table of nominated candidates (9 April 2022). 251 candidates aggregated to 272 name-frequency rows (115 surnames, 157 given) with sex M/F retained per name_type. Western order GIVEN FAMILY. NO LIVE PER-NAME SEARCH FORM FOUND (2026-08-06): GBOS (gbosdata.org) has no name-search feature, only demographic/health/education dashboards. Gambia's eCRVS portal (crvs.gm) is a login-gated citizen self-service registration/correction tool, not a public per-name query; the National Records Office requires in-person office visits for records access. No civil-registry or statistics-office per-name oracle exists for Gambia; this electoral-roll entry remains the best GM lead.

    Last verified 2026-07-02.

  • List of Gambian names compiled by Mr. Saikou Samateh with contributions from subscribers to the Gambia-L discussion foru2000not a population count

    www.columbia.edu. Counts: not recorded. given. 5 forms. 2000. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. List of Gambian names compiled by Mr. Saikou Samateh with contributions from subscribers to the Gambia-L discussion forum.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • This page presents a list of the top 100 traditional Gambian names along with their meanings, published by the Society onot a population count

    www.kabalarians.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 95 forms. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page presents a list of the top 100 traditional Gambian names along with their meanings, published by the Society of Kabalarians.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • Students of the World presents statistics on names in Gambia since 1995.2023not a population count

    studentsoftheworld.info. Counts: not recorded. given. 29 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. Students of the World presents statistics on names in Gambia since 1995.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • This page features a list of traditional Gambian names, derived from various ethnic groups in The Gambia.2023not a population count

    resourcepage.gambia.dk. Counts: not recorded. given. 11 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page features a list of traditional Gambian names, derived from various ethnic groups in The Gambia.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • The page provides a list of popular names in Gambia, covering male and female first names as well as common surnames, punot a population count

    www.accessgambia.com. Counts: not recorded. given and surname. 3 forms. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. The page provides a list of popular names in Gambia, covering male and female first names as well as common surnames, published by Access Gambia.

    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 Gambia?
No — 2 are described on this page (Bambara and Mandinka, Wolof), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

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