Ismail
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the Arabic male personal name ’Ismd'U, the name of a Prophet, the son of Ibrahim
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/is̪maiʎ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ismail is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common given name.
- TRTürkiye1 in 189(measured from records)
- MAMorocco≈1 in 399
- NGNigeria≈1 in 874
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 Ismail 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.
- Türkiye (measured from records)
- #181 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 399 (measured from records)
- 1 in 189 (inferred from the name graph)
434,992 people, 2025
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Türkiye
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ismael in BR Brazil, ES Spain and Исмоил in TJ Tajikistan.
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)
From the Arabic male personal name ’Ismd'U, the name of a Prophet, the son of Ibrahim.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ismail 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #13 | 434,992 | 1 in 189 | 435K | Ismail | 174 |
| NG Nigeria | #89 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 874 | — | Ismail | 97 |
| MA Morocco | #39 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 399 | — | Ismail | 139 |
| BR Brazil | #326 | 81,854as Ismael | 1 in 2.6K | 82K | Ismael | 164 |
| ID Indonesia | #105 | ≈79,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | 90K | Ismail | 194 |
| ES Spain | #119 | 56,869as Ismael | 1 in 879 | 57K | Ismael | 200 |
| TJ Tajikistan | #21 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 726 | listed | Исмоил | 16 |
434,992 people counted by TÜİK NIP — most used given names, 2025. 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: TÜİK NIP — most used given names; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names. 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)
Ismail is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Arabic, Muslim: name used for the biblical Moses; linked here to Sennar rulers.
as a nameAfrican Names
In Arabic, Name of a prophet; in Islamic chronology, son of Ibrahim (Abraham).
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
g Name of the son of 1nrAHIM (Abraham) by Hajar, his Egyptian concubine. Arabs believe that they are descended from Isma‘il, while the Jews are descended from Isaac, the son of Abraham by Sarah. The Ismaili sect of Shiites believe that on the death of the imam Ja‘far al-Sidiq in 765 the Divine Spirit passed to his son Isma‘il rather than to his other son Musa.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Ishmael, the first son of Abraham; traditionally the ancestor of the Arabs.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, a male given name from Arabic, equivalent to English Ishmael
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)
- Ibn Kathirb. 1301SYnot in their usual nameSyrian Islamic historian, exegete and scholar (c.1300–1373)
- Ismail Ib. 1487IRfounder and first shah of Safavid Iran
- Ismail IIb. 1533IRSafavid Shah of Iran from 1576 to 1577
- Ismail Ibn Sharifb. 1645MASultan of Morocco from 1672 to 1727
- Isma'il Pashab. 1831EGnot in their usual nameKhedive of Egypt from 1863 to 1879
- İsmail Enverb. 1881TROttoman politician and general (1881–1922)
- Ismail al-Faruqib. 1921USPalestinian-American Muslim philosopher and scholar (1921–1986)
- Ismail Merchantb. 1936INIndian film producer (1936–2005)
- Ismail Omar Guellehb. 1947FRPresident of Djibouti since 1999
- Ismail Haniyehb. 1962PSHamas leader (1962–2025)
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 123 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | TÜİK NIP — most used given names | 2025 | 435K | #10 |
| ID Indonesia | Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names | — | 90K | #6 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6.9K | #718 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 5.2K | #393 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.3K | #7,841 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.1K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1K | #7,847 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2000 | 33 | — |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Ismail mean, and where does it come from?
- From the Arabic male personal name ’Ismd'U, the name of a Prophet, the son of Ibrahim. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Ismail have the most bearers?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted about 435 thousand people named Ismail, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ismail.
- Where is Ismail most common?
- Ismail is densest in Türkiye, where the national register counts about 1 in 189 people carrying it.
- How do you pronounce Ismail?
- A machine transcription gives /is̪maiʎ/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- Is Ismail a male or female name?
- Ismail 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 Ismail?
- In the etymology graph, Samuel, Ismael and Sammy are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Ismail?
- In Türkiye, the national register counted 434,992 people named Ismail in 2025, about 1 in 189 residents.
- How common is Ismail compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Ismail is the 13th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ismail?
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/ismailThe 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, “Ismail” — the 13th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.