Shëîkh

surname · Latin script

Shëîkh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’. Shëîkh is also written শেখ in Bengali, เช็ค in Thai and Σεχ in Greek.

  • BDBangladesh≈1 in 540(inferred from the name graph)
  • NONorway1 in 7K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 7.2K

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 Shëîkh itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

India (measured from records)

2,562,935 named Sekh

#130 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames, spellings grouped

7 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
319 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 543 (inferred from the name graph)

Bangladesh, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Shëîkh in other scripts: Latin, Bengali, Thai and 4 more

(measured from records)
ShaikhShëîkh in Latin(measured from records)
শেখShëîkh in Bengali(measured from records)
เช็คShëîkh in Thai(measured from records)
ΣεχShëîkh in Greek(measured from records)
ਸੁੱਖShëîkh in Gurmukhi(measured from records)
ഷെയഖShëîkh in Malayalam(measured from records)
షకShëîkh in Telugu(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Shaikh in IN India, US United States, ID Indonesia and Sheikh in PK Pakistan, BD Bangladesh.

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 Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’.

Cited for this meaning 3

  • Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
  • Nordic Names

Attested across 30 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Shëîkh is found

(measured from records)

Shëîkh 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 Shëîkh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#222,562,935as Sekh1 in 5172.6MShaikh275
BD Bangladesh#25≈320,000 est.≈1 in 543listedSheikh134
PK Pakistan#76≈200,000 est.≈1 in 1.3K1Sheikh140
US United States—11,207as Sage1 in 30K19KShaikh319
ID Indonesia—≈7,100 est.≈1 in 40K—Shaikh31
PL Poland—6,601as Sęk1 in 5.8K3.3K—3
NO Norway—7841 in 7K784—14

2,562,935 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls, counting the spelling sekh. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, 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)

Shëîkh is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname42 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Syria

    Languages: English, Arabic, Portuguese

    Also written Sheikh, Śĥěíkĥ, Shëikh, Shëïkh, Šheikh

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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Shëîkh under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Shëîkh mean, and where does it come from?
A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’. Recorded by Whats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of names and Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history] and 1 other source.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Shëîkh?
In India, the national register counted about 2.6 million people named Sekh, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Bangladesh, Pakistan, United States and Indonesia; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Shëîkh?
In Norway, the national register counted 784 people named Shëîkh, about 1 in 7.0 thousand residents.
How common is Shëîkh compared with other names?
In India, Shëîkh is the 22nd most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Shëîkh?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sh%C3%AB%C3%AEkh

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, “Shëîkh” — ranked 8th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Shëîkh parses inside a full name →