Cheikh
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative form of sheik
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃɛk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cheikh is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Senegal than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common given name.
- SNSenegal≈1 in 62(inferred from the name graph)
- ITItaly≈1 in 14K
- FRFrance≈1 in 19K
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.
- Senegal (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 226 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 62 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Senegal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Alternative form of sheik.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cheikh 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SN Senegal | #5 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 62 | 155 | Cheikh | 88 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 9 | Cheikh | 46 |
| DZ Algeria | #576 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Cheikh | 27 |
| FR France | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 1.5K | Cheikh | 226 |
| MR Mauritania | #1 | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 66K | Cheikh | 45 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Cheikh | 51 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,924 | 1 in 26K | 1.9K | Cheikh | 59 |
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: This page provides a list of the most popular names in Mauritania, published by lesprenoms.eu.; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); the dz-kaggle-names register. 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)
Cheikh is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Guinean: 'learned'
as a nameAfrican 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)
- Cheikh Touhamib. 1907DZAlgerian politician
- Dalil Boubakeurb. 1940DZnot in their usual nameFrench physician
- Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaréb. 1951SNPrime Minister of Senegal, 2007-2009
- Cheikh Sidy Bab. 1968SNassociation football player (1968/1972–)
- Cheikh Touréb. 1970SNFrench athlete
- Cheick N'Diayeb. 1985SNnot in their usual nameSenegalese and French footballer
- Cheikh Gueyeb. 1986SNSenegalese footballer
- Cheikh M'Bengueb. 1988FRSenegalese and French footballer
- Cheikh Sabalyb. 1999SNSenegalese footballer
- Iliman Ndiayeb. 2000FRnot in their usual nameSenegalese-French footballer (born 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1.9K | #1,778 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.6K | #894 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1.5K | #495 |
| SN Senegal | DGE — candidate declarations, 41 party/coalition lists (legislatives anticipees 17 Nov 2024) | 2024 | 155 | #4 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 9 | #912 |
| DZ Algeria | Algerian names (Kaggle, MIT) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Cheikh mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of sheik. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Cheikh?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃɛk/ (IPA) for French.
- Is Cheikh a male or female name?
- Cheikh 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 Cheikh have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 254 thousand people named Cheikh in Senegal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cheikh.
- How common is the name Cheikh?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,924 people named Cheikh, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
- How common is Cheikh compared with other names?
- In Senegal, Cheikh is the 5th most common given name of 3,375 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cheikh?
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/cheikhThe 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, “Cheikh” — the 5th most common given name in Senegal. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.