Shêïkh
surname · Latin script
Shêïkh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 441(inferred from the name graph)
- PKPakistan≈1 in 559
- INIndia1 in 517as Sekh
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 Shêïkh 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.
- India (measured from records)
- #130 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 319 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 441 (inferred from the name graph)
2,562,935 named Sekh
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bangladesh, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shaikh in IN India, AE United Arab Emirates, ID Indonesia, Sheikh in PK Pakistan, BD Bangladesh and Sekh in SA Saudi Arabia, KW Kuwait.
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 Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’.
Sources 3
- Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Nordic Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shêïkh 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #22 | 2,562,935as Sekh | 1 in 517 | 2.6M | Shaikh | 275 |
| PK Pakistan | #76 | ≈420,000 est. | ≈1 in 559 | 1 | Sheikh | 140 |
| BD Bangladesh | #25 | ≈370,000 est. | ≈1 in 441 | listed | Sheikh | 134 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #254 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | listed | Sekh | 36 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Shaikh | 31 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #217 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 886 | — | Shaikh | 54 |
| KW Kuwait | #302 | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 812 | — | Sekh | 11 |
| NO Norway | — | 784 | 1 in 7K | 784 | — | 14 |
2,562,935 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls, counting the spelling sekh. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Shêïkh mean, and where does it come from?
- A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’. Recorded by Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names and Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history] and 1 other source.
- In which country does Shêïkh have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 2.6 million people named Sekh, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Shêïkh?
- In Norway, the national register counted 784 people named Shêïkh, about 1 in 7.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Shêïkh compared with other names?
- In India, Shêïkh is the 22nd most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shêïkh?
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/sh%C3%AA%C3%AFkhThe 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, “Shêïkh” — the 22nd most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.