Kareem
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A male given name from Arabic, variant of Karim (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male
- Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes
- Norway (SSB): listed as male
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 42 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Kareem is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Egypt than in any other country, where it is the 89th most common given name. Kareem is also written คารม in Thai, Карими in Cyrillic and কর্ম in Bengali.
- EGEgypt≈1 in 820(inferred from the name graph)
- KWKuwait≈1 in 2.7K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 4.5K
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 Kareem 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.
- Egypt (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 367 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 818 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Egypt, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Kareem in other scripts: Thai, Cyrillic, Bengali and 1 more
(measured from records)10 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Karam in IN India, SY Syria and Karimi in SE Sweden.
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 male given name from Arabic, variant of Karim.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kareem is read
(measured from records)Kareem is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English33%
A male given name from Arabic, variant of Karim.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Arabic29%
Generous
as a nameThe book of African names
‘generous, noble’; Arabic masculine name.
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
- Hindi16%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kareem in Hindi.
- Urdu5.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kareem in Urdu.
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.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Kareem, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kareem 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EG Egypt | #89 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 818 | — | Kareem | 161 |
| NG Nigeria | #582 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | listed | Kareem | 82 |
| IN India | — | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 29K | 5.6K | Karam | 129 |
| US United States | — | 13,237 | 1 in 25K | 13K | Kareem | 367 |
| SY Syria | #287 | ≈9,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Karam | 48 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #373 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | listed | Kareem | 92 |
| SE Sweden | — | 2,988as Karim | 1 in 3.4K | 3K | Karimi | 30 |
| KW Kuwait | #388 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Kareem | 57 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Kareem 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.
Sudan/Arabic: 'generous'
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)- Kareem Abdul-Jabbarb. 1947USAmerican basketball player (born 1947)
- Kareem Mosesb. 1990TTTrinidad and Tobago footballer
- Stephan El Shaarawyb. 1992ITnot in their usual nameItalian association football player (born 1992)
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)78 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 42 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kareem mean, and where does it come from?
- A male given name from Arabic, variant of Karim. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Kareem?
- In the etymology graph, Karim, Ekrem and Kerem are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Kareem a male or female name?
- Kareem is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male; Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes; Norway (SSB): listed as male. We don't publish a percentage split.
- Which countries have the most people named Kareem?
- Mondonomo estimates about 142 thousand people named Kareem in Egypt, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kareem. After it come Nigeria, India, United States and Syria; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kareem?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,237 people named Kareem in 2020, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Kareem compared with other names?
- In Egypt, Kareem is the 89th most common given name of 107,792 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kareem?
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/kareemThe 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, “Kareem” — the 89th most common given name in Egypt. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.