Samir

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Arabic: companion (in nightly conversation), entertainer (with stories, music etc.). See Saamir ,.L., entertainer. Comp. Saamir .l4, fruit-bearing

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Samir is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In Algeria it is the 4th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • AZAzerbaijan≈1 in 243(inferred from the name graph)
  • DZAlgeria≈1 in 295
  • MAMorocco≈1 in 627

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 Samir 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)

≈170,000 named Sameer, est.

#876 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

8 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
355 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 243 (inferred from the name graph)

Azerbaijan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SamirLatin(measured from records)
СамирCyrillic(measured from records)
সমীরBengali(measured from records)
სამირGeorgian(measured from records)
ซามีรThai(measured from records)
ΣαμιρGreek(measured from records)
సమరTelugu(measured from records)
사미르Hangul(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sameer in BR Brazil, PK Pakistan.

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)

companion (in nightly conversation), entertainer (with stories, music etc.). See Saamir ,.L., entertainer. Comp. Saamir .l4, fruit-bearing

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of Muslim Names

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

How Samir is read(measured from records)

Samir 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.

  • Hindi38%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Samir in Hindi.

  • Arabic11%

    companion (in nightly conversation), entertainer (with stories, music etc.). See Saamir ,.L., entertainer. Comp. Saamir .l4, fruit-bearing

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

    fruit-bearing, fruitful, productive

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

    entertainer

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • French9.6%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Samir in French.

  • English8.5%

    Alternative spelling of Sameer.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish6.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Samir in Spanish.

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)

Samir 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.

Where Samir is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PK Pakistan#579≈170,000 est.≈1 in 1.4KlistedSameer81
DZ Algeria#4≈150,000 est.≈1 in 295—Samir102
BR Brazil—111,487as Samara1 in 1.9K111KSameer27
BD Bangladesh#236≈84,000 est.≈1 in 1.9K—Samir74
EG Egypt#187≈59,000 est.≈1 in 1.8KlistedSamir178
MA Morocco#76≈57,000 est.≈1 in 627—Samir110
AZ Azerbaijan#29≈42,000 est.≈1 in 243240Samir83
TN Tunisia#55≈18,000 est.≈1 in 6681.3KSamir73
SE Sweden#7654,0251 in 2.5K4KSamir62

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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Azerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics; INS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Samir is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name73 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Samír, Sàmir, Sämîr, Šämĩř, Sämïr

  • French given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Algeria, Morocco

    Languages: French, Romanian

    Also written Śămîŕ, Sămir, Samîr, Sãmįr, Śâmįř

  • a separate name8 spellings in the group

    Also written Sāmir, Samîr, Sāmīr, Samīr, Šāmîr

  • Khmer given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, India, Algeria, United States

    Languages: Khmer, Vietnamese

    Also written Šámír, Śamir, Šâmîr, Šamîr, Šämîr

  • Polish given name16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Also written Sâmîř, Samīr, Sämïr, Şamir, Sàmĭr

  • Finnish given name12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Finland, United States, Algeria

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Ṩämīr, Šamir, Ŝàmĩř, Samîr, Şamịr

  • Hungarian given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Hungary, United States, Peru

    Also written Samír, Sàmiř, Śámĩŕ, Śámíŕ, Śàmîŕ

55 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Samir 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.

  • ‘Companion in night talk’. Feminine forms: Samar, Samira. Sana’ 9 ‘Brilliance’, ‘radiance’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In Swedish, Samir (m.fl. former) är ett arabiskt namn bildat till samīr, sāmir ’kamrat, underhållare (vid nattliga samtal)’. Se även → Samer. En känd namnbärare är artisten Samir Badran (f. 1990) i den svenska musikduon Samir & Viktor.

    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)

19201940196019802000Samir Amin, b. 1931Samir Geagea, b. 1952Samir Rifai, b. 1966Samir Guesmi, b. 1967Sameer Soni, b. 1968Samir Javadzadeh, b. 1980Samir Handanovič, b. 1984Samir Nasri, b. 1987Samir Ujkani, b. 1988

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 118 sources across 60 countries.

Official registers attesting Samir
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20229.4K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—9.2K#1,802
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—8.7K#2,351
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—4K#697
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20202.6K—
TN TunisiaINS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022)19701.3K#10
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)2020405—
AZ AzerbaijanAzerbaijan Ministry of Justice — Civil Registry Name Statistics—240—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—193#1,802

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
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • 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

What does the name Samir mean, and where does it come from?
companion (in nightly conversation), entertainer (with stories, music etc.). See Saamir ,.L., entertainer. Comp. Saamir .l4, fruit-bearing Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
What are other forms of the name Samir?
In the etymology graph, Sameer and Semir are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Samir have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 168 thousand people named Sameer in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold.
Is Samir a male or female name?
Samir is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
How common is the name Samir?
In Sweden, the national register counted 4,025 people named Samir, about 1 in 2.5 thousand residents.
How common is Samir compared with other names?
In Pakistan, Samir is the 579th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Samir?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/samir

The 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, “Samir” — the 579th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Samir parses inside a full name →