Samuel
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the biblical male personal name Samuel, from Hebrew Shemuel, literally ‘name of god’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sæmjuəl/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Samuel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Angola it is the 48th most common given name.
- BRBrazil1 in 405(measured from records)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 478
- USUnited States1 in 588
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #786 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 492 (measured from records)
- 1 in 257 (inferred from the name graph)
566,085 people, 2020
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the biblical male personal name Samuel, from Hebrew Shemuel, literally ‘name of god’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Samuel 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 | #897 | 566,085 | 1 in 588 | 565K | Samuel | 492 |
| BR Brazil | #132 | 522,131 | 1 in 405 | 522K | Samuel | 223 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Samuel | 98 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 672 | — | Samuel | 154 |
| FR France | — | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 936 | 96K | — | 7 |
| AO Angola | #48 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 880 | — | Samuel | 44 |
| SE Sweden | — | 22,803 | 1 in 447 | 23K | — | 53 |
| FI Finland | — | 21,683 | 1 in 257 | 27K | — | 32 |
| SV El Salvador | #101 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 478 | — | Samuel | 75 |
566,085 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)
Samuel is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
The name Samuel is commonly understood to mean 'heard of God' or 'asked of God', derived from a wordplay in 1 Samuel 1:20 where his mother Hannah says, "Because I have asked for him from the LORD." An alternative scholarly etymology suggests the meaning 'his name is El (God)'.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Samuel, of Hebrew origin, means 'heard by God' or 'asked of God.' It belongs to one of the most revered prophets in the Old Testament, known for his wisdom, integrity, and devotion. It is a timeless and classic name signifying a special connection to the divine.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Samuel represents the ideal of total obedience to God ('Speak, for your servant is listening') and the power of intercessory prayer. He bridges the era of the Judges and the Monarchy, establishing the role of the prophet as the conscience of the king.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
The name Samuel (Shemuel) is generally interpreted as 'Name of God' (Shem-El) or 'Heard of God' (Shama-El). The biblical narrative in 1 Samuel 1:20 links it to the phrase 'I have asked him of the Lord,' playing on the Hebrew root 'sha'al' (to ask).
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
Samuel represents the ideal of faithful obedience to God's voice ('Speak, for your servant is listening') and the power of intercessory prayer. He embodies the prophetic office that holds secular rulers accountable to divine law.
as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database
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)
- Samuel Johnsonb. 1709GBEnglish writer and lexicographer (1709–1784)
- Samuel Hahnemannb. 1755DEGerman physician known for creating homeopathy
- Sam Houstonb. 1793USnot in their usual nameAmerican statesman, politician, and soldier (1793-1863)
- Samuel Coltb. 1814US19th-century American industrialist and inventor (1814–1862)
- Thomas Kuhnb. 1922USnot in their usual nameAmerican historian, physicist and philosopher (1922 – 1996)
- Samuel Huntingtonb. 1927USAmerican political scientist (1927–2008)
- Samuel L. Jacksonb. 1948USAmerican actor (born 1948)
- Samuel Alitob. 1950USAssociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 2006
- Sam Mendesb. 1965GBnot in their usual nameBritish stage and film director (born 1965)
- Samuel Eto'ob. 1981CMCameroonian association football player
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)
Attested in 198 sources across 94 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 565K | #73 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 522K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 518K | #37 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 293K | #172 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 96K | #66 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 81K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 27K | #82 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 23K | #186 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 22K | — |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 13K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8.3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.1K | #37 |
Reference works 10
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- 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
- What does the name Samuel mean, and where does it come from?
- From the biblical male personal name Samuel, from Hebrew Shemuel, literally ‘name of god’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Samuel a male or female name?
- Samuel 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 Samuel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 566 thousand people named Samuel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled samuel.
- Where is Samuel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Samuel is densest in Finland — about 1 in 257 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Samuel?
- In the etymology graph, Ismail, Ismael and Samwel are forms of the same name in other languages; Sam, Sami and Sammy are recorded short or pet forms.
- How do you pronounce Samuel?
- A machine transcription gives /sæmjuəl/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Samuel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 566,085 people named Samuel in 2020, about 1 in 588 residents.
- How common is Samuel compared with other names?
- In the United States, Samuel is the 897th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Samuel?
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/samuelThe 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, “Samuel” — the 897th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.