Selma

given name · Latin script

Meaning: 2 Of uncertain origin, probably a contracted form of Selima

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

/sˈælma/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Selma is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country. In Morocco it is the 29th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • TRTürkiye≈1 in 513(inferred from the name graph)
  • BRBrazil1 in 2.2K
  • MAMorocco≈1 in 9.1K

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 Selma 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)

≈160,000 people, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
243 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 513 (inferred from the name graph)

Türkiye, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SelmaLatin(measured from records)
סלמהHebrew(measured from records)
ሰልሞEthiopic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Salma in MA Morocco, US United States.

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)

2 Of uncertain origin, probably a contracted form of Selima. It has also been occasionally used in Germany and- Scandinavia, probably because it occurs as the name of Ossian’s castle in Macpherson’s ballads.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Selma is read(measured from records)

Selma 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.

  • Turkish59%

    1. Barış içinde bulunma, huzur, erinç. 2. Güzel, hoş kadın.

    as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)

  • Portuguese19%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Selma in Portuguese.

  • English11%

    city, AL; pers. name

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

Selma 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 Selma is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye—≈160,000 est.≈1 in 513—Selma30
BR Brazil#26294,7431 in 2.2K102KSelma153
SE Sweden—14,3941 in 70914KSelma28
US United States—12,322as Salma1 in 27K12KSalma243
ES Spain—12,012as Salma1 in 4.2K12KSelma63
NO Norway—5,7761 in 94720K—17
MA Morocco#29≈3,900 est.≈1 in 9.1K—Salma124
DK Denmark—3,5141 in 1.7K3.5K—2
IS Iceland—3521 in 996352——

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); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Selma is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Turkish given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Syria, United States, Netherlands

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek

    Also written Şelma, Selmâ, Şëlmä, Sélmà, Şelmā

  • English given name19 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Swedish

    Also written Selmà, Sèlmā, Sêlmâ, Sélmà, Şëlmã

  • Finnish given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Finland, Sweden, Estonia

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Sëlmã, Sèlma

  • Croatian given name41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Russia, Bosnia & Herzegovina

    Languages: Croatian, Russian, Czech

    Also written Сельма, Селма, Сэльма, Сэлма, Šelma

  • Indonesian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Türkiye, United States, Malaysia

    Also written 'Selma, Šeĺma

66 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)

Selma 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.

  • 2 Of uncertain origin, probably a contracted form of Selima. It has also been occasionally used in Germany and- Scandinavia, probably because it occurs as the name of Ossian’s castle in Macpherson’s ballads.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In French, Nom germanique ou arabe selon les cas; souvent rattaché à « paix » ou à Selma.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • In French, Forme féminine d’Anselme; origine germanique, « protégée du dieu Ans ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • North African Muslim: 'secure'.

    as a nameAfrican 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)

1850190019502000Selma Lagerlöf, b. 1858Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, b. 1924Sonja Ziemann, b. 1926Selma Blair, b. 1972Selma Björnsdóttir, b. 1974Selma Vilhunen, b. 1976Selma Ergeç, b. 1978Selma Bajrami, b. 1980Selma Bacha, b. 2000

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)

InformalMerhaba Selma,Hi Selma, (English)

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 118 sources across 58 countries.

Official registers attesting Selma
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—102K#467
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202295K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—94K#334
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—20K#225
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—14K#300
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20209K#2,627
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20208.5K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20255.8K—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—3.5K#172
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—883#3,102
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—810#1,608
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—375#334

Reference works 8

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 Selma mean, and where does it come from?
2 Of uncertain origin, probably a contracted form of Selima. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
Is Selma a male or female name?
Selma is a female 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 Selma have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 160 thousand people named Selma in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled selma.
How common is the name Selma?
In Brazil, the national register counted 94,743 people named Selma in 2022, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.
How common is Selma compared with other names?
In Morocco, Selma is the 29th most common given name of 41,711 given names recorded there.
What are other forms of the name Selma?
In the etymology graph, Salma, Salima and Zelma are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Selma?
A machine transcription gives /sˈælma/ (IPA) for Turkish.

What do you want to know about Selma?

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

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, “Selma” — the 29th most common given name in Morocco. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Selma parses inside a full name →