Salema

given name · Latin script

Meaning: A seabream, Sarpa salpa

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

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

Salema is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Morocco than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • LYLibya≈1 in 23K(inferred from the name graph)
  • GYGuyana1 in 27K
  • MAMorocco≈1 in 75K

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.

Morocco (inferred from the name graph)

≈480 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
36 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)

Libya, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SalemaLatin(measured from records)
সালেমBengali(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

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 seabream, Sarpa salpa.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Salema 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 Salema is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MA Morocco—≈480 est.≈1 in 75K—Salema7
AF Afghanistan—≈310 est.≈1 in 120K—Salema2
LY Libya#430≈300 est.≈1 in 23K—Salema14
BD Bangladesh—≈290 est.≈1 in 564K—Salema15
US United States—2071 in 1.6M205Salema36
GY Guyana—281 in 27K28——
KW Kuwait—≈20 est.≈1 in 148K—Salema5

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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)

Salema is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, India, United States, Portugal

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Sálema, Sãlemä

  • English given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Australia

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Şalema

  • Turkish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan

    Also written Şalema

36 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)

Salema 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.

  • In Spanish, seabream, Sarpa salpa

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

  • In Latvian, Čelama, pilsēta Indijā

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

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)

Informalनमस्ते Salema जी,Hi Salema, (English)

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)

Attested in 21 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Salema
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020117#144,270
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010114#145,220
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000100#150,436
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 Salema mean, and where does it come from?
A seabream, Sarpa salpa. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Salema?
A machine transcription gives /səˈɫimə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
Is Salema a male or female name?
Salema 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 Salema have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 476 people named Salema in Morocco, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled salema.
How common is the name Salema?
In the United States, the national register counted 207 people named Salema in 2020, about 1 in 1.6 million residents.
How common is Salema compared with other names?
In Libya, Salema is the 430th most common given name of 8,449 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Salema?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Salema” — the 430th most common given name in Libya. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Salema parses inside a full name →