Penda is a Wolof and Senegambian name meaning "beloved" or "loved one." Used widely across Senegal, Gambia, and the Wolof diaspora.
Penda Mbow (born 1955), the Senegalese historian and women's rights advocate, is a contemporary bearer.
Penda does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Penda reduce to 4, The Builder. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.