Names of Senegal SN
The names that most distinguish Senegal from the rest of the world are Ndiaye, Diop and Mamadou; in our record corpus the commonest names held in Senegal are Mamadou and Ndiaye.
Written in French, Wolof.
- Population
- 16M
- Official registers
- 1
- Name forms recorded
- 2.6K
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.
How names work in Senegal
2 naming traditions are in use in Senegal, 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 Senegal
Characteristic of Senegal
Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Senegal 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.
Scripts & spelling
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
- DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024)2024not a population count
Direction Generale des Elections (DGE), Senegal. Counts: election candidates. given and surname. 873 forms. 2024. Licence: Open government data.
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.
- Caste systems in Africaencyclopaedia
- Fatougenealogy
- Meaning of the name Mamadouweb
- Ngente: Gambia's traditional newborn naming ceremonyweb
- Origine des patronymes : Ndiaye, Diop, Guèye, Fall, Wadeweb
- Popular names of Senegalweb
- Senegalese surnamesweb
- Understanding Wolof Social Structureweb
- Wolofweb
- Wolof peopleencyclopaedia
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 Senegal?
- No — 2 are described on this page (Wolof, French), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.
Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Senegal”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/SN (data snapshot 2026-09-12).