Salman
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Arabic: safe, mild, affable, perfect; name of a companion of the Prophet Muhammad
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsæmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Salman is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In Bahrain it is the 6th most common given name.
- BHBahrain≈1 in 356(inferred from the name graph)
- PKPakistan≈1 in 610
- SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 774
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 303 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 356 (inferred from the name graph)
≈380,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bahrain, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
4 other spellings are counted as the same name:
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)
safe, mild, affable, perfect; name of a companion of the Prophet Muhammad
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Salman is read(measured from records)
Salman is one spelling over 5 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.
- Hindi35%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Salman in Hindi.
- Indonesian18%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Salman in Indonesian.
- Arabic11%
safe, mild, affable, perfect; name of a companion of the Prophet Muhammad
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
safe
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- Urdu9.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Salman in Urdu.
- Turkish8.5%
Başıboş, serbest, özgür.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Salman 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 | #131 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 610 | listed | Salman | 141 |
| BD Bangladesh | #168 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | listed | Salman | 96 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #46 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 774 | — | Salman | 163 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈9,900 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Salman | 52 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #66 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Salman | 122 |
| BH Bahrain | #6 | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 356 | — | Salman | 93 |
| US United States | — | 3,904 | 1 in 85K | 15K | Salman | 303 |
| KW Kuwait | #91 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Salman | 76 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010. 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)
Salman 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 German, from a title/occupation 'property mediator, trustee, guardian'; also northern German from Saal/Saale, and Jewish from Solomon
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Germanic form related to Salomo on the model of native names
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In French, altération du nom allemand Zellmann, de Zell, nom de plusieurs localités en Allemagne, et mann « homme »
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
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)
- Salman the Persianb. 568IRcompanion of Muhammad; first Persian convert to Islam
- Salman II of Bahrainb. 1894BHRuler of Bahrain (1894–1961)
- Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudb. 1935SAKing of Saudi Arabia since 2015
- Salmaan Taseerb. 1944PKnot in their usual namePakistani politician (1944-2011)
- Salman Rushdieb. 1947INIndian-born English and American novelist (born 1947)
- Salman Khurshidb. 1953INIndian politician, born 1953
- Salman Khanb. 1965INIndian actor and producer (born 1965)
- Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifab. 1969BHPrime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain
- Sal Khanb. 1976USnot in their usual nameAmerican educator (born 1976)
- Salman Al-Farajb. 1989SASaudi Arabian footballer
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 88 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3.9K | #4,675 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 54 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 21 | #4,675 |
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)
- 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
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 Salman mean, and where does it come from?
- safe, mild, affable, perfect; name of a companion of the Prophet Muhammad Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
- What are other forms of the name Salman?
- In the etymology graph, Süleyman, Selim and Salomon are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Salman?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsæmən/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Salman a male or female name?
- Salman 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.
- In which country does Salman have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 383 thousand people named Salman in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled salman.
- How common is the name Salman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,904 people named Salman in 2020, about 1 in 85 thousand residents.
- How common is Salman compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Salman is the 131st most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Salman?
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/salmanThe 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, “Salman” — the 131st most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.