Saleh
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsɑɫɛh/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Saleh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 27th most common given name.
- SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 438(inferred from the name graph)
- NGNigeria≈1 in 3.2K
- USUnited States1 in 101K
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 Saleh 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 (inferred from the name graph)
- #645 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 354 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 438 (inferred from the name graph)
≈200,000 named Salih, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Saudi Arabia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Salah in EG Egypt, MA Morocco, DZ Algeria and Salih in TR Türkiye, CY Cyprus.
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)
A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Saleh is read(measured from records)
Saleh 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.
- Arabic38%
righteous; prophet Ṣāliḥ
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
righteous; good
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
- English18%
A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Indonesian13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Saleh in Indonesian.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Saleh 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 | #27 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 416 | 165K | Salih | 136 |
| DZ Algeria | #17 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 532 | — | Salah | 111 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #158 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 438 | — | Saleh | 191 |
| EG Egypt | #98 | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | listed | Salah | 173 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Saleh | 74 |
| MA Morocco | #47 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 552 | — | Salah | 120 |
| US United States | — | 3,308 | 1 in 101K | 15K | Saleh | 354 |
| CY Cyprus | #22 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 512 | — | Salih | 24 |
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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Saleh is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Saleh och Salih är arabiska namn som betyder ’rättfärdig’.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
2 pious; good; virtuous;
as a nameMuslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
good
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of 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)
- Chairul Salehb. 1916IDIndonesian politician
- Rachad Ahmed Saleh Farahb. 1950DJDjiboutian diplomat
- Akmal Salehb. 1964EGAustralian comedian
- Amrullah Salehb. 1972AFFirst Vice President of Afghanistan from 2020 to 2021
- Tarik Salehb. 1972SESwedish director of Egyptian origin
- Raed Salehb. 1977DEGerman politician
- Karim Salehb. 1978FRFrench actor
- Seyneb Salehb. 1987DEGerman actress
- Dua Salehb. 1994SDsinger
- Ali Saleh Amrob. 2000USassociation football player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 86 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,356 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.7K | #3,682 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.8K | #5,500 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.2K | #5,253 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 66 | #5,253 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 55 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 6 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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
- How do you pronounce Saleh?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsɑɫɛh/ (IPA) for Arabic.
- What does the name Saleh mean, and where does it come from?
- A prophet of Islam who prophesied to the people of Thamud. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Saleh have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 197 thousand people named Salih in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Saleh?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,308 people named Saleh in 2020, about 1 in 101 thousand residents.
- How common is Saleh compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Saleh is the 27th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Saleh?
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/salehThe 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, “Saleh” — the 27th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.