Ali
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Muslim surname from Arabic ʿAlī, literally ‘high, lofty’, one of the 99 names of God
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ali/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ali is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the most common given name.
- SYSyria≈1 in 92(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye1 in 111
- SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 115
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Türkiye (measured from records)
- #31 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 551 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 92 (inferred from the name graph)
736,478 people, 2025
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Syria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Muslim surname from Arabic ʿAlī, literally ‘high, lofty’, one of the 99 names of God.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ali counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #1 | 736,478 | 1 in 111 | 736K | Ali | 227 |
| NG Nigeria | #37 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 594 | — | Ali | 108 |
| EG Egypt | #12 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 290 | — | Ali | 222 |
| AF Afghanistan | #4 | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 121 | — | Ali | 50 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #5 | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 115 | — | Ali | 230 |
| SY Syria | #4 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 92 | — | Ali | 90 |
| KW Kuwait | #4 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 121 | — | Ali | 167 |
736,478 people counted by TÜİK NIP — most used given names, 2025. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: TÜİK NIP — most used given names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Ali is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Toledo, Alexandria, Buenos Aires; expelled from Spain 1492
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Arabic, high, lofty, sublime, eminent, excellence, noble, honourable; one of the names of Allah; fourth Caliph of Islam; name of the Prophet Muhammad's cousin & son-in-law
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In Arabic, ‘elevated, exalted’; also the name of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
A disciple of The Prophet Mohammed; (highly
as a nameA Handbook of African Names
In Arabic, Highest
as a nameThe book of African names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Alib. 599SA4th Rashidun Caliph (r. 656–661) and first Shia Imam
- Al-Mas'udib. 896IQnot in their usual name10th-century Arab historian, geographer, and traveller
- Ali Pashab. 1750ALAlbanian ruler (1740–1822)
- Muhammad Alib. 1769GRWali of Egypt and Sudan (1769–1849)
- Muhammad Ali Bograb. 1909PKPrime Minister of Pakistan from 1953 to 1955
- Ali Hassan Mwinyib. 1925TZTanzanian statesman (1925–2024)
- Adonisb. 1930SYnot in their usual nameSyrian poet, writer and translator (born 1930)
- Ali Abdullah Salehb. 1947YEPresident of North Yemen (1978–1990) and Yemen (1990–2012)
- Ali Larijanib. 1958IRIranian politician and military officer (1958–2026)
- Ali Larterb. 1976USAmerican actress and model (born 1976)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 188 sources across 97 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — most used given names | 2025 | 736K | #4 |
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — newborn names | 2025 | 2.3K | #22 |
Reference works 12
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Ali a male or female name?
- Ali is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Ali mean, and where does it come from?
- Muslim surname from Arabic ʿAlī, literally ‘high, lofty’, one of the 99 names of God. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Ali?
- In the etymology graph, Ana, Sandra and Alex are forms of the same name in other languages; Alexina and Lexa are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Alice and Alexandra.
- In which country does Ali have the most bearers?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted about 736 thousand people named Ali, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ali.
- How do you pronounce Ali?
- A machine transcription gives /ali/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- How common is the name Ali?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted 736,478 people named Ali in 2025, about 1 in 111 residents.
- How common is Ali compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Ali is the most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ali?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/aliThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Ali” — the most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.