Updated January 4, 2024

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Family name origins & meanings

  • Japanese : from a word meaning ‘horse-riding ground’, ‘race track’; a common place name. The surname is found mostly in west central Japan. One Baba family in Kai (now Yamanashi prefecture) were samurai, vassals of the Takeda family.
  • Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian : from the Slavic word baba ‘old woman’, ‘grandmother’, ‘witch’, hence an unflattering nickname for a man thought to resemble an old woman. In Czech baba can also mean ‘coward’.
  • Hungarian (Bába) : habitational name from one of many places called Bába, in Abaúj, Borsod, Somogy, and Vas counties of Hungary, and Közép-Szolnok county, now in Romania.
  • Arabic (Bābā) : from a diminutive of Abū ‘father’.