Idris
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Arabic/Welsh; good man; fiery, impulsive lord
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/id̪ɾis̪/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Idris is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 505(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 6.6K
- KEKenya≈1 in 8.7K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 150 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 505 (inferred from the name graph)
≈420,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Arabic: name borne by Libyan and Kanem-Bornu rulers; associated with Islamic leadership.
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Idris is read(measured from records)
Idris is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Turkish53%
1. Meyvesi hoş kokulu, kerestesi güzel bir kiraz türü. 2. Kur’an-ı Kerim’de adı geçen, ilk kez giysi dikip giydiği için terzilerin, ilk kez kalem kullandığı için yazarların piri sayılan İdris Peygamberin adı.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- English17%
Arabic/Welsh; good man; fiery, impulsive lord
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A male given name from Welsh, popularized by actor Idris Elba.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili7.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Idris in Swahili.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Idris 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #161 | ≈420,000 est. | ≈1 in 505 | — | Idris | 80 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Idris | 29 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Idris | 150 |
| KE Kenya | #868 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 8.7K | — | Idris | 30 |
| MY Malaysia | #454 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | — | Idris | 105 |
| US United States | — | 3,342 | 1 in 100K | 3.2K | Idris | 119 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | 92 | — | 4 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,779 | 1 in 5.7K | 1.8K | Idris | 23 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics. 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)
Idris is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Arabic, Arabic: name borne by Libyan and Kanem-Bornu rulers; associated with Islamic leadership.
as a nameAfrican Names
Welsh traditional name, derived from iud ‘lord’ + ris ‘ardent’, ‘impulsive’. It was common in the Middle Ages and earlier, and has been strongly revived since the late roth century. }
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Name of a man mentioned twice in the Qur‘an, described as ‘a true man, a prophet’ and ‘of the righteous’. It was also the name of the founder of the first Shiite dynasty (788-974).
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)
- Idris Ierb. 745SAIdrisid ruler (r. 788–791)
- Idris Imad al-Dinb. 139215th-century Yemeni religious and political leader
- Idris Abdul Wakilb. 1925TZTanzanian President of Zanzibar (1925-2000)
- Idriss Débyb. 1952TDnot in their usual nameChadian former president (1952–2021)
- John Jonesb. 1957GBnot in their usual nameBritish producer, musician
- Idriss Ndele Moussab. 1959TDnot in their usual nameChadian politician (1959–2013)
- Idriss Carlos Kamenib. 1984CMnot in their usual nameCameroonian footballer (born 1984)
- Tunku Ismail Idrisb. 1984MYCrown Prince of Johor
- Eyedressb. 1990PHnot in their usual nameFilipino musician
- Idriss Saadib. 1992FRnot in their usual nameAlgerian and French footballer
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 102 sources across 53 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.2K | #5,204 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 1.8K | #1,134 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 612 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 391 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 108 | #5,204 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics | — | 92 | — |
Reference works 9
- 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- 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
- Where does the name Idris come from?
- Arabic: name borne by Libyan and Kanem-Bornu rulers; associated with Islamic leadership. Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Idris?
- A machine transcription gives /id̪ɾis̪/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- What does the name Idris mean?
- In English, Arabic/Welsh; good man; fiery, impulsive lord
- Is Idris a male or female name?
- Idris 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.
- In which country does Idris have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 424 thousand people named Idris in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled idris.
- How common is the name Idris?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,342 people named Idris in 2020, about 1 in 100 thousand residents.
- How common is Idris compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Idris is the 161st most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Idris?
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/idrisThe 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, “Idris” — the 161st most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.