Istanbul
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Istanbul (the largest city in Turkey)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Istanbul is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country.
- AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 628K(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 3.9M
- NLNetherlands1 in 3.5M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Istanbul itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 32 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 628K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Azerbaijan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ştambul in TM Turkmenistan.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Istanbul (the largest city in Turkey)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Istanbul 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 | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 3.9M | — | Istanbul | 32 |
| AZ Azerbaijan | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 628K | — | Istanbul | 1 |
| TM Turkmenistan | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 556K | — | Ştambul | 1 |
| US United States | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 44M | listed | Istanbul | 15 |
| NL Netherlands | 5 | 1 in 3.5M | 5 | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 34M | 1 | — | 3 |
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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Istanbul 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.
In Turkish, misspelling of İstanbul
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, pert, to isthmus o/ Corinth or
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, province, city, Turkey
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, peninsula, Croatia
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Istra [tstria]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 7 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
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
- What does the name Istanbul mean, and where does it come from?
- Istanbul (the largest city in Turkey) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Istanbul have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 people named Istanbul in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled istanbul.
- How common is the name Istanbul?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 5 people named Istanbul, about 1 in 3.5 million residents.
What do you want to know about Istanbul?
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/istanbulThe 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, “Istanbul”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.