Names of Sierra Leone SL

Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments records Alice as the commonest given name in Sierra Leone and Kamara as the commonest surname; the names that most distinguish Sierra Leone from the rest of the world are Sesay, Bangura and Koroma.

Written in English.

Population
6.6M
Official registers
9
Name forms recorded
69
BBuilt from 9 official registers (2023), 69 name forms in our corpus.

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

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

How names work in Sierra Leone

Names in Sierra Leone follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Sierra Leone

Counts not recorded by the publisher · authority tier 3
Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments, 2023 — 37 given names counted over a population the publisher did not record.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Alice2—
1Doris2—
1Hawa2—
1Mariama2—
1Millicent2—
1Mohamed2—
1Patricia2—
1Rebecca2—
2Amie1—
2Aminata1—
2Annie1—
2Beatrice1—
2Betty1—
2Chernor1—
2Eleanor1—
2Elise1—
2Fatmata1—
2Fatu1—
2Florence1—
2Harold1—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments 2023Across all recordsalice: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. alicenot rankeddoris: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. dorisnot rankedhawa: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. hawanot rankedmariama: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. mariamanot rankedmillicent: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. millicentnot rankedmohamed: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. mohamednot rankedpatricia: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. patricianot rankedrebecca: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. rebeccanot rankedamie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. amienot rankedaminata: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. aminatanot rankedannie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. annienot rankedbeatrice: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. beatricenot rankedbetty: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. bettynot rankedchernor: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. chernornot rankedeleanor: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. eleanornot rankedelise: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. elisenot rankedfatmata: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. fatmatanot rankedfatu: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. fatunot rankedflorence: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. florencenot rankedharold: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. haroldnot rankedhellen: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. hellennot rankedisatu: 2 → 30 · ranks lower across all records2. isatu30jeneba: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. jenebanot rankedkhadie: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. khadienot rankedmagdalene: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. magdalenenot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments, 2023 on the left; every record we hold for Sierra Leone 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 Sierra Leone

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

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

Scripts & spelling

Kamarasurname●
Sesaysurname●
Bangurasurname●
Koromasurname●
Turaysurname●
The best-attested names in Sierra Leone, 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

  • Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments2023headline

    Government of Sierra Leone. Counts: not recorded. given and surname. 37 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 harvest. Presidential Nominations Gazette No.29 (May 2023), official public-service staff appointments (health-service officers); record format 'Surname, Given [Initial], Role, date' — order SURNAME, GIVEN.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • ECSL 2023 Nominated Candidates (Presidential/Mayoral/Chairperson)2023not a population count

    Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL). Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 66 forms. 2023. Licence: Open government data.

    What we know about this register

    2023 official nominated-candidate lists (mayoral + chairperson PDFs). 99 candidates -> 65 distinct given / 66 distinct surname with counts. Names published ALLCAPS as SURNAME GIVEN (surname=1st token, given=2nd). Presidential-contender PDF excluded (pdftotext reading-order scrambled record boundaries). candidate_list_derived.

    Last verified 2026-07-02.

  • NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates2018not a population count

    Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL, former NEC). Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 1,225 forms. 2018. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 electoral-roll harvest. 2018 Local Council + Chairperson + Mayor NOMINATED candidate lists; columns FirstName [OtherNames] Surname, published ALLCAPS; order GIVEN [MIDDLE] SURNAME. candidate_list_derived.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • NEC/ECSL — 2012 Councillor and Ordinary-MP/PCMP results tables2012not a population count

    Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL, former NEC). Counts: registered voters. given and surname. 731 forms. 2012. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 electoral-roll harvest. 2012 Councillor + Ordinary-MP/PCMP RESULTS tables; Candidate column order GIVEN SURNAME; party and vote columns dropped. election_results_derived.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • NEC/ECSL — 2012 parliamentary and Local Council nominated candidates2012not a population count

    Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL, former NEC). Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 479 forms. 2012. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 electoral-roll harvest. 2012 Parliamentary + Local Council NOMINATED candidate lists; columns First Name / Surname / Sex; order GIVEN SURNAME. candidate_list_derived.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • NEC/ECSL — 2018 parliamentary candidate list (given names only)2018not a population count

    Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL, former NEC). Counts: election candidates. given. 266 forms. 2018. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 electoral-roll harvest. 2018 MP candidate list. Only OtherNames (given) + Sex are published in the text — there is no surname column, so this source carries a given-name slice only.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • ECSL — 2023 Members of Parliament nomination Gazette No.292023not a population count

    Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone (ECSL). Counts: registered voters. given and surname. 150 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Round-5 electoral-roll harvest. 2023 MP nomination Gazette (No.29, 20 Jun 2023), parts A–D: candidate plus nominator full names; addresses and voter-ids dropped; order GIVEN [MIDDLE] SURNAME.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • The article discusses the frequency and spelling of names in the Sierra Leone Ebola Database, published in the Pan Afric2014not a population count

    www.researchgate.net. Counts: not recorded. given and surname. 5 forms. 2014. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. The article discusses the frequency and spelling of names in the Sierra Leone Ebola Database, published in the Pan African Medical Journal.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • This page lists the top 100 authentic Sierra Leonean names and their meanings, published by the Society of Kabalarians.2023not a population count

    www.kabalarians.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 6 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page lists the top 100 authentic Sierra Leonean names and their meanings, published by the Society of Kabalarians.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

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 Sierra Leone?
Alice, according to Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023), with 2 bearers recorded.
What is the most common surname in Sierra Leone?
Kamara, according to Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023), with 5 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Sierra Leone?
Because they count different people. Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments (2023) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Alice. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Foday. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Sierra Leone”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/SL (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from Government of Sierra Leone Gazette — 2023 public-service appointments.