Names of Rwanda RW

NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex (2025) records Ineza as the commonest given name in Rwanda; the names that most distinguish Rwanda from the rest of the world are Jean, Theogene and Pierre.

Written in Kinyarwanda, English, French, Swahili.

Population
13M
Official registers
1
Name forms recorded
499
BBuilt from 1 official register (2025), 499 name forms in our corpus, 5 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 Rwanda are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Rwanda included.

How names work in Rwanda

4 naming traditions are in use in Rwanda, 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 Rwanda

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex, 2025 — 20 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Ineza8.2K138
2Ishimwe5.9K—
3Uwase5.4K—
4Irakoze3.1K—
5Igiraneza2.9K—
6Iganze2.8K—
7Inezayimana2.2K—
8Uwineza2.2K—
9Iradukunda2K—
10Kundwa1.9K—
11Umutoniwase1.8K—
12Irasubiza1.6K—
13Umukundwa1.4K—
14Agwize1.3K—
15Nishimwe1.3K—
16Isimbi1.2K—
17Izibyose1.2K—
18Igihozo1.1K—
19Niyogisubizo1.1K—
20Niyogushimwa1.1K—

Where the two lists disagree

20 of NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex's top 20 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex 2025Across all recordsineza: 1 → 138 · ranks lower across all records1. ineza138ishimwe: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. ishimwenot rankeduwase: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. uwasenot rankedirakoze: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. irakozenot rankedigiraneza: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. igiranezanot rankediganze: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. iganzenot rankedinezayimana: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. inezayimananot rankeduwineza: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. uwinezanot rankediradukunda: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. iradukundanot rankedkundwa: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. kundwanot rankedumutoniwase: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. umutoniwasenot rankedirasubiza: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. irasubizanot rankedumukundwa: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. umukundwanot rankedagwize: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. agwizenot rankednishimwe: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. nishimwenot rankedisimbi: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. isimbinot rankedizibyose: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. izibyosenot rankedigihozo: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. igihozonot rankedniyogisubizo: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. niyogisubizonot rankedniyogushimwa: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. niyogushimwanot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex, 2025 on the left; every record we hold for Rwanda on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Rwanda

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

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

Scripts & spelling

Jeangiven name●
Claudegiven name●
Pierregiven name●
Theogenegiven name●
Emmanuelgiven name●
The best-attested names in Rwanda, 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

  • NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex2025headline (given)

    National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). Counts: residents. given. 20 forms. 2024–2025. Licence: open data.

    What we know about this register

    Top-20 most preferred newborn given names per sex from the CRVS (civil registration) system, with exact registration counts. Two report years harvested (2025 Vital Statistics Report sheet Annex2; 2024 Report sheet Annex1). NB the report header labels these "surname", but they are Kinyarwanda given / preferred baby names (newborn first names) — recorded as name_type=given. 80 rows (20 per sex per year).

    Last verified 2026-06-28.

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

What is the most common given name in Rwanda?
Ineza, according to NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex (2025), with 8,216 bearers recorded among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Rwanda?
Because they count different people. NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex (2025) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Ineza. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jean. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Rwanda?
No — 4 are described on this page (Kinyarwanda, Swahili, British, French), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Rwanda”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/RW (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from NISR Rwanda Vital Statistics / CRVS — top-20 baby given names by sex.