Sultan

given name · Latin script

Meaning: from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary'

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

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

Sultan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 30th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • TRTürkiye1 in 429(measured from records)
  • CYCyprus≈1 in 1.4K
  • PKPakistan≈1 in 2.8K

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.

Türkiye (measured from records)

191,066 people, 2025

#886 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
125 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 429 (inferred from the name graph)

Türkiye

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SultanLatin(measured from records)
СултанCyrillic(measured from records)
სულთანGeorgian(measured from records)
סולטאןHebrew(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)

from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Sultan 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 Sultan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#30191,0661 in 429191KSultan90
PK Pakistan—≈84,000 est.≈1 in 2.8K—Sultan54
AF Afghanistan#1000≈29,000 est.≈1 in 1.3K—Sultan6
KG Kyrgyzstan—≈3,900 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Sultan10
SY Syria—≈3,800 est.≈1 in 5K—Sultan11
CY Cyprus#50≈900 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Sultan17

191,066 people counted by TÜİK NIP — most used given names, 2025. 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: TÜİK NIP — most used given names. 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)

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

  • Hindi given name54 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written সুলতান, Sultaan, Shultan, Sult̤ān, Shultaan

  • Arabic given name156 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Saudi Arabia, United States, Syria, India

    Also written Sulṭān, Sültan, Sultán, Sültän, Šultan

  • a separate name10 spellings in the group

    Also written Sulṭân, Ṣulṭān, Sultān, Sulṭān, Sultân

  • Indonesian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Türkiye

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Sultan, Sultan', Sūltan, Şultan, Sültän

  • Russian given name59 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh

    Also written Султан, Сұлтан, Сультан, Şultan, S'Ultan

74 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)

Sultan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Arabic, ‘ruler, authority’; title used as a personal name.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In Turkish, A monarchic title for Sunni Muslim monarchs.

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

  • In Turkish, 1. Padişah, hükümdar. 2. Hükümdar ailesinden olan kadınlara verilen ad. 3. Sevilen, beğenilen, baş tacı edilen.

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

  • In English, sovereign of Turkey

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Swahili, Swahili: 'ruler'.

    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)

12001400160018002000Sultan Mahmud, b. 1350Sultan Agung, b. 1593Sultan Bahu, b. 1630Sultan bin Ahmad Al Busaidi, b. 1800Amet-khan Sultan, b. 1920Sultan bin Abdulaziz, b. 1926Sultan Ali Keshtmand, b. 1935Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, b. 1956Sultan Kösen, b. 1982Sultan Al-Brake, b. 1996

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 94 sources across 47 countries.

Official registers attesting Sultan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — most used given names2025191K#17

Reference works 8

  • 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
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
  • 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 Sultan mean, and where does it come from?
from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Sultan?
A machine transcription gives /s̪uɫt̪an̪/ (IPA) for Turkish.
Is Sultan a male or female name?
Sultan 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 Sultan have the most bearers?
In Türkiye, the national register counted about 191 thousand people named Sultan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sultan.
Where is Sultan most common?
Sultan is densest in Türkiye, where the national register counts about 1 in 429 people carrying it.
How common is the name Sultan?
In Türkiye, the national register counted 191,066 people named Sultan in 2025, about 1 in 429 residents.
How common is Sultan compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Sultan is the 30th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sultan?

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

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, “Sultan” — the 30th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sultan parses inside a full name →