Saif
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Alternative form of seif (“type of sand dune”)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Saif is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In Oman it is the most common given name.
- IQIraq≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- OMOman≈1 in 140as Said
- MAMorocco≈1 in 158as Said
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 Saif 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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 324 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 named Saeed, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Iraq, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Said in US United States, MA Morocco, OM Oman and 3 more and Saeed in PK Pakistan, AE United Arab Emirates.
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)
Alternative form of seif (“type of sand dune”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Saif is read(measured from records)
Saif 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.
- Arabic31%
sword
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- Urdu21%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Saif in Urdu.
- Hindi19%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Saif in Hindi.
- English7.2%
Alternative form of seif (“type of sand dune”).
as a wordkaikki.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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Saif 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #528 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 937 | listed | Saeed | 159 |
| MA Morocco | #7 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 158 | listed | Said | 144 |
| TZ Tanzania | #24 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 349 | 1 | Said | 72 |
| AF Afghanistan | #12 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 384 | 1 | Said | 42 |
| DZ Algeria | #15 | ≈87,000 est. | ≈1 in 497 | #9 | Said | 84 |
| OM Oman | #1 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 140 | — | Said | 108 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #14 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 389 | — | Saeed | 181 |
| US United States | — | 20,064as Syed | 1 in 17K | 20K | Said | 303 |
| IQ Iraq | #889 | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2 | Saif | 68 |
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; the ma-etatcivil-authorized-given-names register; INEC Special Gazette 2021 — 2020 parliamentary election results; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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)
Saif 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 Swedish, Saif är ett arabiskt namn som innehåller ett ord med betydelsen ’svärd’.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
sword; sword bearer
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
Sword, saber,
as a nameDictionary of Islamic Names
In Welsh, third-person singular present indicative/future of sefyll
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)
- Saif Ul Haqueb. 1958BDarchitect
- Saif Saaeed Shaheenb. 1982KEQatari-Kenyan long-distance runner
- Saif Nabeelb. 1986IQIraqi singer
- Saif Azzuzb. 1987USLibyan-Yurok painter (born 1987)
- Saif Al Amerib. 1998AEEmirati ice hockey player
- Saif Al Rammahib. 2002IQIraqi sprinter
- Saif AhmadBDBangladeshi-American restaurateur and poker player
- Saif ChamaouiTNTunisian film director and cinematographer
- Saif AbukeshekPSPalestinian activist
- Saif M. MohammadCAresearcher
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 65 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.2K | #5,334 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 147 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 14 | #5,334 |
| IQ Iraq | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 2 | #217 |
| MA Morocco | Liste des prénoms d'usage au Maroc — official authorized given-names list | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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
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 Saif mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative form of seif (“type of sand dune”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Saif have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 249 thousand people named Saeed in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Saif?
- In the United States, the national register counted 20,064 people named Syed in 2020, about 1 in 17 thousand residents.
- How common is Saif compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Saif is the 528th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
- Is Saif a male or female name?
- Saif 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 do you want to know about Saif?
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/saifThe 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, “Saif” — the 528th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.