Names of Saudi Arabia SA

Saudi Arabia has no single naming system: its communities build a name in different ways; Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked) records ملك as the commonest given name in Saudi Arabia.

Written in Arabic.

Population
34M
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
67K
BBuilt from 2 official registers (2020), 67,184 name forms in our corpus, 12 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Saudi Arabia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Saudi Arabia included.

How names work in Saudi Arabia

2 naming traditions are in use in Saudi Arabia, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Saudi Arabia

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2
Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked), 2020 — 10 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1ملك——
2حور——
3ديم——
4ورد——
5كيان——
6ليان——
7نورة——
8ترف——
9غنى——
10ريما——

Where the two lists disagree

10 of Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked)'s top 10 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked) 2020Across all recordsملك: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. ملكnot rankedحور: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. حورnot rankedديم: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. ديمnot rankedورد: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. وردnot rankedكيان: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. كيانnot rankedليان: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. ليانnot rankedنورة: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. نورةnot rankedترف: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. ترفnot rankedغنى: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. غنىnot rankedريما: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. ريماnot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked), 2020 on the left; every record we hold for Saudi Arabia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Saudi Arabia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Saudi Arabia holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

محمدMohammedRiyaAbdullahAhmedاحمدخالدAbdulKhalidفهدمريضعليعبدالعزيزAbdulazizAliFahadFaisalنورهالأبImranAbdulrahmanSultanعمرنوافNoorMohdHussainسارهAmirوليدSaudSaeedيوسفWaleedRajaياسرIbrahimAboNawafMahmoudMajedابوUmarSalmanAdnanسعيدAmalReemمحمودOmarمشعلريانSaraTariqريمعبدهNouraNorahAbeerعادل
Sized by how much of the difference between Saudi Arabia's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Names in Saudi Arabia are written in Latin (60%) and Arabic (40%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

Mohammedgiven name(measured from records)
محمدgiven name(measured from records)
Khansurname(measured from records)
Riyagiven name(measured from records)
احمدgiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Saudi Arabia, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Saudi Arabia?
ملك, according to Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked) (2020) among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Saudi Arabia?
Because they count different people. Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked) (2020) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is ملك. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Mohammed. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Saudi Arabia?
No — 2 are described on this page (Arabic, Yemeni and Gulf Tribal), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Saudi Arabia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/SA (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Saudi MoI Civil Affairs — most-registered newborn names (ranked).