Shams
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Shams is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: sun. Al-Shams juots!, ‘the Sun’: title of the 91st sura.
- PKPakistan≈1 in 6.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 209Kas Shamus
- AFAfghanistan≈1 in 2.9K
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 Shams 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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 109 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈34,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Afghanistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shamas in EG Egypt.
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)
sun. Al-Shams juots!, ‘the Sun’: title of the 91st sura
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of Muslim Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shams 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #226 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | listed | Shams | 84 |
| BD Bangladesh | #733 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Shams | 75 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | — | Shamas | 9 |
| AF Afghanistan | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Shams | 12 |
| US United States | — | 1,588as Shamus | 1 in 209K | 1.6K | Shams | 109 |
| SE Sweden | — | 436 | 1 in 23K | 436 | Shams | 8 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)
Shams 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 Arabic, sun. See Shams (m.)
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In Arabic, the sun
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim 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)
- Shams Tabrizib. 1185IRspiritual instructor of Mewlānā Rumi
- Princess Mafalda, Baroness Lombardo di San Chiricob. 1969ITnot in their usual nameItalian princess
- Shams AliEGgymnast
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 56 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,037 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #22,733 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 680 | #32,026 |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Shams mean, and where does it come from?
- sun. Al-Shams juots!, ‘the Sun’: title of the 91st sura Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
- Is Shams a male or female name?
- Shams 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 Shams have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 34 thousand people named Shams in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shams.
- How common is the name Shams?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 436 people named Shams, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Shams compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Shams is the 226th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shams?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shamsThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Shams” — the 226th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.