Fam
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Fam is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. In English, recorded as Clipping of family.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 849K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 28K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 182 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
unclear stem; probably an old personal-name base
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fam is read(measured from records)
Fam 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.
- English48%
Clipping of family
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Arabic9.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Fam in Arabic.
- Malay5.3%
A (regional) term for a surname or family name, particularly used in eastern Indonesia (e.g. Maluku, Minahasa, Timor).
as a wordrecorded as Indonesiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Fam 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Fam | 51 |
| US United States | 392 | 1 in 849K | 1.6K | Fam | 182 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 655K | — | Fam | 14 |
| IT Italy | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 274K | — | Fam | 10 |
| BR Brazil | 225 | 1 in 941K | 225 | — | 2 |
| SG Singapore | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Fam | 53 |
| AU Australia | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 128K | — | Fam | 72 |
| EE Estonia | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 175K | listed | — | 1 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)
Fam is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, unclear stem; probably an old personal-name base
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Fâo, Portugal
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Hausa, pound (currency used in the UK, obsolete in Nigeria)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, third-person plural present indicative of fazer
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Henri Famb. 1949FRFrench politician
- Paulo Famb. 1970BRbadminton player
- Awa Fam Thiamb. 2006ESSpanish basketball player (born 2006)
- Anna Famactress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 24 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #16,901 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 392 | #52,851 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 268 | #68,569 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 225 | #33,362 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- Where does the name Fam come from?
- unclear stem; probably an old personal-name base Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What does the name Fam mean?
- In English, Clipping of family
- In which country does Fam have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.3 thousand people named Fam in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fam.
- How common is the name Fam?
- In the United States, the national register counted 392 people named Fam in 2010, about 1 in 849 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Fam?
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/famThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Fam”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.