Shamai
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register), 2002
/ʃɑmai/(machine-generated) Swahili · model-generated
Shamai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Israel than in any other country.
- USUnited States≈1 in 6.3Mfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- INIndia1 in 189M
- ILIsrael≈1 in 120Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- Israel (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 72 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 119K (inferred from the name graph)
≈84 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shamai 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IL Israel | ≈84 est. | ≈1 in 119K | — | Shamai | 16 |
| US United States | ≈54 est. | ≈1 in 6.3M | 6 | Shamai | 72 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 275K | — | Shamai | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | — | Shamai | 13 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 6.9M | 5 | Shamai | 20 |
| IN India | 7 | 1 in 189M | 7 | — | 2 |
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: SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Ya'akov Shamaib. 1940ILIsraeli farmer and politician (1940-2016)
- Shlomo Shamaib. 1953ILIsraeli information theorist
- Dudy Shamayb. 1969ILnot in their usual nameIsraeli illustrator and caricaturist
- Adi ShamayILnot in their usual nameIsraeli broadcast journalist and news presenter
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)Evidence
(measured from records)9 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 7 | #147,113 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 5 | #230,412 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Shamai?
- In Swahili /ʃɑmai/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Shamai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 84 people named Shamai in Israel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shamai.
- How common is the name Shamai?
- In India, the national register counted 7 people named Shamai, about 1 in 189 million residents.
What do you want to know about Shamai?
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/shamaiThe 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, “Shamai”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.