Ismael

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: Ishmael (biblical character)

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

Ismael is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 879(measured from records)
  • BRBrazil1 in 2.6K
  • TRTürkiye1 in 189as Ismail

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 Ismael 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 (measured from records)

434,992 named Ismail, 2025

#181 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
399 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 879 (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

IsmailLatin(measured from records)
ИсмаилCyrillic(measured from records)
ΙσμαηλGreek(measured from records)
ისმაილGeorgian(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Ismail in TR Türkiye, ID Indonesia, NG Nigeria and 1 more and Исмоил in TJ Tajikistan.

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)

Ishmael (eldest son of Abraham)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

How Ismael is read(measured from records)

Ismael is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • Spanish63%

    Ishmael (biblical character)

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

    Hebreo: 'Dios escucha' o 'Dios oyó'.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • English11%

    Obsolete form of Ishmael.

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

  • Portuguese9.6%

    Ishmael (eldest son of Abraham)

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

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)

Ismael 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 Ismael is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#13434,992as Ismail1 in 189435KIsmail174
NG Nigeria#89≈240,000 est.≈1 in 874—Ismail97
MA Morocco#39≈89,000 est.≈1 in 399—Ismail139
BR Brazil#32681,8541 in 2.6K82KIsmael164
ID Indonesia#105≈79,000 est.≈1 in 3.4K90KIsmail194
ES Spain#11956,8691 in 87957KIsmael200
TJ Tajikistan#21≈12,000 est.≈1 in 726listedИсмоил16

434,992 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time 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)

Ismael is also recorded as 9 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Catalan given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Andorra

    Also written Ismaël

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Ismaēl, Ismäel, Ismaël, Ismae͏̈l, Ismaêl

  • Swahili given name12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kenya, United States, Philippines, Spain

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho, Kinyarwanda

    Also written Ismaèl, Ismaël, Ismaél, Isma'El, Ismäël

  • Indonesian given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Indonesia, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ismaël, Ismaèl, Isma'El, Ismaêl, Ismăel

  • French (Côte d’Ivoire) given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Côte d’Ivoire

    Also written Ismaël

  • Thai given name107 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, Laos, Türkiye, United States

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written อิสมาแอ, อิสมะแอ, อิสมาแอล, Ismail, Ismaae

  • Finnish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Finland, Philippines

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Ismaël, Ismäël, Ïsmäël

  • Russian given name17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Iraq, Ukraine, Russia

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Исмаел, Ісмаель, Исмаель, Исмаэл, Ісмаел

  • Hungarian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, Peru, Spain, United States

    Also written Ismáél, Ĩśmáĕĺ

69 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)

Ismael is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • God listens; Ismael (Gen 16, 11)

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In French, Origine hébraïque, « Dieu entendra ».

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

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)

500100015002000Ismail Samani, b. 849Ibn Kathir, b. 1301Ismail I, b. 1487Ismail II, b. 1533Ismail Ibn Sharif, b. 1645Isma'il Pasha, b. 1831Ismail al-Faruqi, b. 1921Ismail Merchant, b. 1936Ismail Omar Guelleh, b. 1947Ismail Haniyeh, b. 1962
  • Ismail Samanib. 849KGAmir of the Samanid Empire from 892 to 907
  • Ibn Kathirb. 1301SYnot in their usual nameSyrian Islamic historian, exegete and scholar (c.1300–1373)
  • Ismail Ib. 1487IRfounder and first shah of Safavid Iran
  • Ismail IIb. 1533IRSafavid Shah of Iran from 1576 to 1577
  • Ismail Ibn Sharifb. 1645MASultan of Morocco from 1672 to 1727
  • Isma'il Pashab. 1831EGnot in their usual nameKhedive of Egypt from 1863 to 1879
  • Ismail al-Faruqib. 1921USPalestinian-American Muslim philosopher and scholar (1921–1986)
  • Ismail Merchantb. 1936INIndian film producer (1936–2005)
  • Ismail Omar Guellehb. 1947FRPresident of Djibouti since 1999
  • Ismail Haniyehb. 1962PSHamas leader (1962–2025)

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 114 sources across 60 countries.

Official registers attesting Ismael
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202282K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—81K#374
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—79K#552
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—57K#155
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—56K#74
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)20203.6K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—470#374

Reference works 7

  • 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)
  • 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

Where does the name Ismael come from?
Ishmael (eldest son of Abraham) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Ismael?
In the etymology graph, Samuel, Ismail and Sammy are forms of the same name in other languages.
What does the name Ismael mean?
In Spanish, Ishmael (biblical character)
Is Ismael a male or female name?
Ismael is a male 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 Ismael have the most bearers?
In Türkiye, the national register counted about 435 thousand people named Ismail, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Ismael most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ismael is densest in Spain — about 1 in 879 people — even though Türkiye holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ismael?
In Brazil, the national register counted 81,854 people named Ismael in 2022, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
How common is Ismael compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Ismael is the 13th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ismael?

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

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, “Ismael” — the 13th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ismael parses inside a full name →