Saleh

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈsɑɫɛh/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Saleh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 27th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 438(inferred from the name graph)
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 3.2K
  • USUnited States1 in 101K

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 Saleh 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)

≈200,000 named Salih, est.

#645 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
354 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 438 (inferred from the name graph)

Saudi Arabia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SalihLatin(measured from records)
สาและThai(measured from records)
СалихCyrillic(measured from records)
সালেহBengali(measured from records)
სალეჰGeorgian(measured from records)

Locally spelled Salah in EG Egypt, MA Morocco, DZ Algeria and Salih in TR Türkiye, CY Cyprus.

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)

A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

How Saleh is read(measured from records)

Saleh 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.

  • Arabic38%

    righteous; prophet Ṣāliḥ

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

    righteous; good

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • English18%

    A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Indonesian13%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Saleh in Indonesian.

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)

Saleh 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.

Where Saleh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#27≈200,000 est.≈1 in 416165KSalih136
DZ Algeria#17≈81,000 est.≈1 in 532—Salah111
SA Saudi Arabia#158≈78,000 est.≈1 in 438—Saleh191
EG Egypt#98≈75,000 est.≈1 in 1.4KlistedSalah173
NG Nigeria—≈66,000 est.≈1 in 3.2K—Saleh74
MA Morocco#47≈64,000 est.≈1 in 552—Salah120
US United States—3,3081 in 101K15KSaleh354
CY Cyprus#22≈2,500 est.≈1 in 512—Salih24

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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Saleh is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Ṣâleḥ, Sāleḥ, ٍsaleh, Saleḧ, Saleḥ

  • Amharic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ethiopia, Nigeria, United States, Türkiye

    Also written ሳለህ

  • Polish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Also written Śåļĕh, Šàlèh

76 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Saleh 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 Swedish, Saleh och Salih är arabiska namn som betyder ’rättfärdig’.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • 2 pious; good; virtuous;

    as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman

  • good

    as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of 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)

190019502000Chairul Saleh, b. 1916Rachad Ahmed Saleh Farah, b. 1950Akmal Saleh, b. 1964Amrullah Saleh, b. 1972Tarik Saleh, b. 1972Raed Saleh, b. 1977Karim Saleh, b. 1978Seyneb Saleh, b. 1987Dua Saleh, b. 1994Ali Saleh Amro, b. 2000

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)

Formalالسيد Saleh المحترم،Dear Mr. Saleh, (English)
Informalمرحباً Saleh،Hi Saleh, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 86 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Saleh
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.2K#5,253
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202066#5,253
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202555—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20226—

Reference works 8

  • 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)
  • 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

How do you pronounce Saleh?
A machine transcription gives /ˈsɑɫɛh/ (IPA) for Arabic.
What does the name Saleh mean, and where does it come from?
A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Saleh have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 197 thousand people named Salih in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Saleh?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,308 people named Saleh in 2020, about 1 in 101 thousand residents.
How common is Saleh compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Saleh is the 27th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Saleh?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/saleh

The 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, “Saleh” — the 27th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Saleh parses inside a full name →