Husayn

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Arabic: diminutive of Hasan (42, beautiful. Imam Husayn: son of Khalifa Ali and the third Imam of the Shi‘ites, who attained martyrdom in the battle of Karbala.'*’

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

Husayn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Libya than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • LYLibya≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 187K
  • SYSyria≈1 in 215K

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.

Libya (inferred from the name graph)

≈420 people, est.

Sources
73 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)

Libya, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

diminutive of Hasan (42, beautiful. Imam Husayn: son of Khalifa Ali and the third Imam of the Shi‘ites, who attained martyrdom in the battle of Karbala.'*’

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of Muslim Names

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

How Husayn is read(measured from records)

Husayn is one spelling over 4 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.

  • Arabic42%

    diminutive of Hasan (42, beautiful. Imam Husayn: son of Khalifa Ali and the third Imam of the Shi‘ites, who attained martyrdom in the battle of Karbala.'*’

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

    diminutive of Hasan, beautiful; Imam Husayn was the second son of Caliph Ali

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

    diminutive of Hasan; name of Prophet Muḥammad’s grandson

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

    diminutive of Hasan

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • English24%

    A son of Ali and brother of Hassan; a martyr, and Shi'a Imam.

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

  • Turkish6.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Husayn in Turkish.

  • Spanish5.2%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Husayn in Spanish.

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)

Husayn 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 Husayn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
LY Libya#107≈420 est.≈1 in 16K—Husayn23
NG Nigeria—≈300 est.≈1 in 715K—Husayn10
SA Saudi Arabia—≈180 est.≈1 in 187K—Husayn15
EG Egypt—≈140 est.≈1 in 759KlistedHusayn23
YE Yemen—≈100 est.≈1 in 294K—Husayn9
SY Syria—≈90 est.≈1 in 215K—Husayn13
UZ Uzbekistan—≈50 est.≈1 in 614Klisted—1
SE Sweden—131 in 785K13—4

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: the wgnd-eg-names register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the uz-ismlarim 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Husayn is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Peru, Mexico, Portugal

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Ḥusayn, Hụsayn, Ḥuṣayn

  • Urdu given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Malaysia, Türkiye

    Languages: Urdu, Hindi

    Also written Ḥusayn

  • Malay given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Ḥusayn

  • Turkish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Syria, Turkmenistan

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen

    Also written Hüsayn, Huşayn, Ḥusayn

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Ḥuṣayn, Hu̱sayn, Ḥusayn̄, Huṣayn, Ḥusayn

  • Swahili name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Hüsayn

  • French given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Spain, United States

    Also written Hussein, Hussayn, Ḥusayn, Hûssein, Hüššein

  • Persian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Afghanistan, Iran, United States, Türkiye

    Also written Ḥusayn, Ҳусайн, Ҳусаӣн, Hūsayn

33 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)

Husayn 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.

  • Diminutive of asan ‘good’, ‘beautiful’, ‘exquisite’. Al-Husayn (c.626- 680) was the grandson of the Prophet, whose supporters emerged after his death as the Shiite party.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)

500100015002000Husayn ibn Ali, b. 626Avicenna, b. 980Hussein bin Ali, b. 1853Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, b. 1892Hussein el-Shafei, b. 1918Hussain Muhammad Ershad, b. 1930Barack Obama, b. 1934Hussein I of Jordan, b. 1935Hissène Habré, b. 1942Ahmed al-Sharaa, b. 1982
  • Husayn ibn Alib. 626SAgrandson of Muhammad and the 3rd Shia Imam (626–680)
  • Avicennab. 980UZnot in their usual namePersian polymath, physician and philosopher (c. 980–1037)
  • Hussein bin Alib. 1853TRnot in their usual nameSharif and Emir of Mecca, then King of Hejaz and Sharifian Caliph (1854–1931)
  • Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardyb. 1892PKnot in their usual nameBengali barrister and politician (1892–1963)
  • Hussein el-Shafeib. 1918EGnot in their usual nameEgyptian revolutionary and politician (1918–2005)
  • Hussain Muhammad Ershadb. 1930BDnot in their usual namePresident of Bangladesh from 1983 to 1990 Former (6th) Army chief of Bangladesh
  • Barack Obamab. 1934KEnot in their usual nameeconomist and father of Barack Obama Jr. (1934–1982)
  • Hussein I of Jordanb. 1935JOnot in their usual nameKing of Jordan from 1952 to 1999
  • Hissène Habréb. 1942TDnot in their usual name5th president of Chad
  • Ahmed al-Sharaab. 1982SYnot in their usual namePresident of Syria since 2025

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 17 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Husayn
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—13#31,100
UZ Uzbekistanismlarim.uz — Uzbek given names———
EG EgyptWGND 2.0 — Egypt given names———

Reference works 2

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)

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 Husayn mean, and where does it come from?
diminutive of Hasan (42, beautiful. Imam Husayn: son of Khalifa Ali and the third Imam of the Shi‘ites, who attained martyrdom in the battle of Karbala.'*’ Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
Is Husayn a male or female name?
Husayn 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.
What are other forms of the name Husayn?
In the etymology graph, Hasan, Hüseyin and Hussein are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Husayn have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 424 people named Husayn in Libya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled husayn.
How common is the name Husayn?
In Sweden, the national register counted 13 people named Husayn, about 1 in 785 thousand residents.
How common is Husayn compared with other names?
In Libya, Husayn is the 107th most common given name of 8,449 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Husayn?

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

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, “Husayn” — the 107th most common given name in Libya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Husayn parses inside a full name →