Hyams
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Americanized form of any of the various Ashkenazic surnames derived from the Yiddish personal name Khayem, Khayim (see Heim)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈhaɪəmz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Hyams is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 388K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 934K
- DKDenmark1 in 1.5M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 8 (measured from records)
- 1 in 388K (inferred from the name graph)
857 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
Americanized form of any of the various Ashkenazic surnames derived from the Yiddish personal name Khayem, Khayim (see Heim).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hyams 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 857 | 1 in 388K | 857 | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | 11 | 1 in 4.5M | 11 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 9 | 1 in 934K | 9 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 7 | 1 in 2.5M | 7 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 4 | 1 in 1.5M | 4 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 3 | 1 in 1.7M | 3 | — | — |
857 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Hyams is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, ‘Son of Hyam’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Henry M. Hyamsb. 1806USAmerican politician
- Gary Bensonb. 1901GBnot in their usual nameEnglish singer and songwriter
- Leila Hyamsb. 1905USAmerican actress (1905-1977)
- Edward Hyamsb. 1910GBBritish writer
- Marjorie Hyamsb. 1920USAmerican jazz vibraphonist (1920-2012)
- Joe Hyamsb. 1923USAmerican columnist and biographer (1923–2008)
- Peter Hyamsb. 1943USAmerican film director, screenwriter and cinematographer
- Nina Hyamsb. 1952USAmerican linguist
- John Hyamsb. 1964USAmerican film director
- Simone Hyamsb. 1971GBBritish actress
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 18 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 857 | #27,974 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 819 | #27,669 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 722 | #33,884 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 11 | #114,632 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 9 | #65,843 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 7 | #71,453 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4 | #69,246 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 3 | #12,284 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Hyams mean, and where does it come from?
- Americanized form of any of the various Ashkenazic surnames derived from the Yiddish personal name Khayem, Khayim (see Heim). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Hyams?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈhaɪəmz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Hyams have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 857 people named Hyams, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Hyams most common?
- Hyams is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 388 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Hyams?
- In the United States, the national register counted 857 people named Hyams in 2010, about 1 in 388 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Hyams?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hyamsThe 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, “Hyams”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.