Samĭ

given name · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Samĭ is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Tunisia it is the 9th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Derived from Arabic سَامٍ (sāmin, “high, elevated”).

rarermore common
  • FIFinland1 in 202(measured from records)
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 346
  • DZAlgeria≈1 in 700

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 Samĭ 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.

United States (measured from records)

121,443 named Sam, 2020

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
348 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 202 (inferred from the name graph)

Finland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)
SamĭLatin(measured from records)
สามThai(measured from records)
СамиCyrillic(measured from records)
სამიGeorgian(measured from records)
ՍամիArmenian(measured from records)

5 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sami in TR Türkiye, US United States, FI Finland and 3 more.

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)

Derived from Arabic سَامٍ (sāmin, “high, elevated”).

Cited for this meaning 7

  • A concise dictionary of first names
  • Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
  • Digital Pāḷi Dictionary
  • TDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Samĭ 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 Samĭ is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—121,443as Sam1 in 2.7K112KSami348
DZ Algeria#38≈61,000 est.≈1 in 700—Sami74
TR Türkiye#198≈56,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Sami106
SA Saudi Arabia#52≈45,000 est.≈1 in 765—Sami160
TN Tunisia#9≈34,000 est.≈1 in 3462.6KSami106
FI Finland#21827,6251 in 20230KSami46
XK Kosovo—≈7,300 est.≈1 in 2655.2K—7

121,443 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling sam. 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; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022); ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search). 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)

Samĭ is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name68 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, Spain, Colombia

    Also written Sami, Sämï, Samí, Samï, Şami

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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Samĭ under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Samĭ mean, and where does it come from?
Derived from Arabic سَامٍ (sāmin, “high, elevated”). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman and 5 other sources.
Is Samĭ a male or female name?
Samĭ is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Samĭ have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Sam, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Samĭ most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Samĭ is densest in Finland — about 1 in 202 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Samĭ?
In Finland, the national register counted 27,625 people named Samĭ, about 1 in 202 residents.
How common is Samĭ compared with other names?
In Tunisia, Samĭ is the 9th most common given name of 13,277 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Samĭ?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sam%C4%AD

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, “Samĭ” — the 9th most common given name in Tunisia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Samĭ parses inside a full name →