Salema
given name · Latin script
Meaning: A seabream, Sarpa salpa (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/s̪al̪em/(machine-generated) Bangla · model-generated · read from সালেম
Salema is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Salema is also written সালেম in Bengali.
- LYLibya≈1 in 11Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GYGuyana1 in 27K
- MAMorocco≈1 in 48Kfew records
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 Salema itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 36 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Libya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Salema in other scripts: Bengali
(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.
How to pronounce Salema
- Bangla:/s̪al̪em/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A seabream, Sarpa salpa.
Cited for this meaning 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 143K | 64 | Salema | 26 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈860 est. | ≈1 in 202K | — | Salema | 15 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈800 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Salema | 7 |
| LY Libya | #430 | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Salema | 14 |
| AF Afghanistan | — | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Salema | 2 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 104K | — | Salema | 12 |
| US United States | — | 207 | 1 in 1.6M | 205 | Salema | 36 |
| GY Guyana | — | 28 | 1 in 27K | 28 | — | — |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; 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 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)- Isabel Salemab. 1940PTbadminton player
- Rita Salemab. 1966PTPortuguese 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)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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
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?
- In Bangla /s̪al̪em/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Salema a male or female name?
- Salema is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- Which countries have the most people named Salema?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Salema in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled salema. After it come Bangladesh, Morocco, Libya and Afghanistan; the country table on this page ranks them.
- 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.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/salemaThe 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” — ranked 38155th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.