Sami
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Turkish: Semite
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sami/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sami is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Tunisia it is the 9th most common given name.
- FIFinland1 in 202(measured from records)
- TNTunisia≈1 in 346
- DZAlgeria≈1 in 700
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 Sami 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 348 (measured from records)
- 1 in 202 (inferred from the name graph)
121,443 named Sam, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘Elevated’, ‘sublime’. Feminine form: Samya.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sami is read(measured from records)
Sami is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Turkish50%
Semite
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Yüksek, yüce.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
- Arabic10%
eminent, exalted, high-minded, sublime
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- French9.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sami in French.
- English7.6%
A member of an indigenous Finno-Ugric people of Lapland.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Sami, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sami 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 121,443as Sam | 1 in 2.7K | 112K | Sami | 348 |
| DZ Algeria | #38 | ≈61,000 est. | ≈1 in 700 | — | Sami | 74 |
| TR Türkiye | #198 | ≈56,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Sami | 106 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #52 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 765 | — | Sami | 160 |
| TN Tunisia | #9 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 346 | 2.6K | Sami | 106 |
| FI Finland | #218 | 27,625 | 1 in 202 | 30K | Sami | 46 |
| XK Kosovo | — | ≈7,300 est. | ≈1 in 265 | 5.2K | — | 7 |
121,443 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling sam. 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; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022); ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search). 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)
Sami is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘Elevated’, ‘sublime’. Feminine form: Samya.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Sami har flera ursprung. Dels är det ett arabiskt namn med betydelsen ’upphöjd’, dels är det en finsk form av → Samuel. Sami var ett modenamn i Finland på 1970-talet. Även i Sverige användes namnet under 1800-talet ibland som en kortform av → Samuel. En känd namnbärare är den svenske författaren Sami Said (f. 1979)
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Süleyman Demirelb. 1924TRnot in their usual name9th President of the Republic of Turkey (1924-2015)
- Sami Freyb. 1937FRFrench actor
- Sami Bouajilab. 1966FRFrench actor
- Sami Al-Jaberb. 1972SAformer Saudi Arabian footballer and manager
- Sami Samirb. 1972ILIsraeli actor
- Sami Hyypiäb. 1973FIFinnish footballer and manager (born 1973)
- William Sami Étienne Grigahcineb. 1986FRFrench record producer (born 1986)
- Sami Allaguib. 1986DETunisian association football player
- Sami Khedirab. 1987DEGerman association football player
- Sami Gayleb. 1996USAmerican child actress
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 114 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30K | #73 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 28K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.6K | #2,514 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 5.2K | #54 |
| TN Tunisia | INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022) | 1980 | 2.6K | #3 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.1K | #2,514 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 193 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 72 | #3,773 |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| XK Kosovo | ASK Kosovo — Kërko Emrin (Name Search) | — | 2 | #54 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- 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
- How do you pronounce Sami?
- A machine transcription gives /sami/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- What are other forms of the name Sami?
- In the etymology graph, Samantha, Sammy and Sammie are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Sami a male or female name?
- Sami 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 does the name Sami mean?
- In Turkish, Semite
- Where does the name Sami come from?
- ‘Elevated’, ‘sublime’. Feminine form: Samya. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- In which country does Sami have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Sam, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Sami most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sami is densest in Finland — about 1 in 202 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Sami?
- In Finland, the national register counted 27,625 people named Sami, about 1 in 202 residents.
- How common is Sami compared with other names?
- In Tunisia, Sami is the 9th most common given name of 13,277 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sami?
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/samiThe 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, “Sami” — the 9th most common given name in Tunisia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.