DEEP DIVE DATACan your first name give away where you're from?
We explored 5.68 million names across Zimbabwe. Patterns emerged in where names were popular, and when.
Two stories.One country.
A new generation.Different names.
Mary · Elizabeth
The most popular first name nationally.
Overtakes Tendai for the national top spot.
Watch thenames change.
One year. Ten provinces.
Which name leads where you're from?
| Province | Top name |
|---|
Follow one province's own timeline
Switch provinces to see how quickly, or slowly, each one's top name turned over.
Same name.Different timing.
Tatenda took the national lead in 1991.
The provincial story unfolded over several years.
& Mashonaland Central
Six years from the early switch to Masvingo settling on Tatenda.
Three provinces.A different chart.
North
South
25 years. Neither Tendai nor Tatenda at number one.
Across 1976–2000, neither name led a single birth-year chart in these three provinces.
Different names.A familiar boundary.
Compare the naming pattern with the leading home language in each province.
Matabeleland North
Matabeleland South
Where neither name took the top spot, Ndebele is the leading home language. Two different measures trace the same provincial boundary.
Your city is home.Where are your roots?
You can be born and raised in Harare or Bulawayo and still have family roots elsewhere.
Where you live.
The place where your everyday life happens.
Where your family is from.
A connection that can reach beyond the city, across generations.
For the next part, we compare people's recorded province with their district of origin.
Two cities.A striking contrast.
Share whose district of origin falls within their recorded province.
In both cities, over 90% of analysed records point to origins elsewhere.
Where theroots lead.
Each city's recorded origins show strong connections to its surrounding region.
have origins in just two provinces.
Matabeleland North
& Matabeleland South
Combined share of recorded origins.
Three thingsto remember.
Names mark generations.
The national favourites changed. Tendai's long run gave way to Tatenda in 1991.
One country has different naming charts.
Bulawayo and the Matabeleland provinces followed their own pattern across the 25 years.
City life and family roots can point to different places.
Harare and Bulawayo's recorded origins connect each city to a different set of provinces.
Zimbabwe'svoter roll.
A register built for elections also holds clues to naming traditions and family geography.
records analysed · all 10 provinces
Voter-roll extracts covered Ser, Surname, Forenames, ID_NUMBER, Gender, Date_of_Birth, Address, Station details, Ward, Local Authority, Constituency, District and Province, across all 10 provinces.
District-of-origin codes were mapped using the Fourth Schedule "Codes for Districts" reference table; code 13 (ambiguous between Chipinge and Chivi in the source table) was excluded from origin analysis.
The counts behind every province collapse for birth year 2000 Harare drops from 252 registered top-name holders in 1999 to just 31 in 2000. That reflects incomplete voter registration for the youngest cohort in the roll, not a real fall in births.
This is structural demographic data, not survey or ballot data it shows where people are from, not how they think or vote.
Two stories hiding in a register.
A country seen through its names.
Deep Dive Data covers Zimbabwe's demographics, culture and public data.