Mahmud
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mahmud is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Egypt than in any other country, where it is the 7th most common given name. In Arabic, recorded as ‘praised’; also spelled Mahmoud and Mahomoud.
- SYSyria≈1 in 186(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 1.2K
- EGEgypt≈1 in 92as Mahmoud
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 Mahmud 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.
- Egypt (inferred from the name graph)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 380 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 186 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100,000 named Mahmoud, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Syria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Mahmoud in EG Egypt, US United States, SY Syria and 2 more and Mahmood in PK Pakistan, BH Bahrain.
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 personal name Mahmud, literally 'praiseworthy'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mahmud is read(measured from records)
Mahmud 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.
- Arabic41%
‘praised’; also spelled Mahmoud and Mahomoud.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Praised; Tanzanian spellings include Mohamoud/Mohamud/Mohmood.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
commendable, praiseworthy
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
praised, good
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
praiseworthy
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
- Turkish27%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mahmud in Turkish.
- English5.9%
From the Arabic personal name Mahmud, literally 'praiseworthy'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
Mahmud 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EG Egypt | #7 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 92 | listed | Mahmoud | 254 |
| BD Bangladesh | #88 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | listed | Mahmud | 159 |
| SY Syria | #25 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 186 | — | Mahmoud | 80 |
| JO Jordan | #19 | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 164 | — | Mahmoud | 153 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Mahmood | 159 |
| US United States | — | 7,671as Mahmoud | 1 in 43K | 7.7K | Mahmoud | 380 |
| KW Kuwait | #39 | ≈6,500 est. | ≈1 in 462 | — | Mahmoud | 101 |
| BH Bahrain | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 353 | — | Mahmood | 96 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Mahmud of Ghaznib. 971AFSultan of the Ghaznavid Empire from 998 to 1030
- Mahmud al-Kashgarib. 1029CNTurkic scholar and lexicographer
- Nur ad-Dinb. 1118IQnot in their usual nameEmir of Aleppo (1146–1174) and Damascus (1154–1174)
- Mahmud Ghazanb. 1271IRthe seventh Ilkhan of Mongol Ilkhanate (1295–1304)
- Qutuzb. 1300UZnot in their usual name3rd Sultan of the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate (r. 1259–1260)
- Mahmud Abbasb. 1935PSpresident of the Palestinian Authority since 2005
- Mahmoud Darwichb. 1941PSThe national Palestinian poet, and author (1941–2008)
- Mahmood Mamdanib. 1946UGnot in their usual nameUgandan academic (born 1946)
- Mahmoud Jibrilb. 1952LYLibyan politician (1952-2020)
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejadb. 1956IR6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2005 to 2013
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 85 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 777 | #14,924 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3 | #14,924 |
Reference works 10
- 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
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- 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
- Where does the name Mahmud come from?
- From the Arabic personal name Mahmud, literally 'praiseworthy'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What does the name Mahmud mean?
- In Arabic, ‘praised’; also spelled Mahmoud and Mahomoud.
- Is Mahmud a male or female name?
- Mahmud 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 Mahmud?
- In the etymology graph, Mahmut, Mahmoud and Mehmud are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Mahmud have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 million people named Mahmoud in Egypt, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Mahmud?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,671 people named Mahmoud in 2020, about 1 in 43 thousand residents.
- How common is Mahmud compared with other names?
- In Egypt, Mahmud is the 7th most common given name of 107,792 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mahmud?
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/mahmudThe 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, “Mahmud” — the 7th most common given name in Egypt. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.