Sheikh
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sheikh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 22nd most common surname.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 441(inferred from the name graph)
- PKPakistan≈1 in 559
- INIndia1 in 517as Sekh
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 Sheikh 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.
- India (measured from records)
- #130 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 319 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 441 (inferred from the name graph)
2,562,935 named Sekh
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bangladesh, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shaikh in IN India, AE United Arab Emirates, ID Indonesia and Sekh in SA Saudi Arabia, KW Kuwait.
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 Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sheikh is read(measured from records)
Sheikh is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Hindi25%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sheikh in Hindi.
- English19%
A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Urdu11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sheikh in Urdu.
- Bangla11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sheikh in Bangla.
- Arabic5.3%
elder, leader, or religious scholar; title used as a personal name
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
elder, chief, scholar
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sheikh 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 | #22 | 2,562,935as Sekh | 1 in 517 | 2.6M | Shaikh | 275 |
| PK Pakistan | #76 | ≈420,000 est. | ≈1 in 559 | 1 | Sheikh | 140 |
| BD Bangladesh | #25 | ≈370,000 est. | ≈1 in 441 | listed | Sheikh | 134 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #254 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | listed | Sekh | 36 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Shaikh | 31 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #217 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 886 | — | Shaikh | 54 |
| KW Kuwait | #302 | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 812 | — | Sekh | 11 |
| NO Norway | — | 784 | 1 in 7K | 784 | — | 14 |
2,562,935 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls, counting the spelling sekh. 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; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, 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)
Sheikh 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.
chief
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
leader, elder
as a nameWhats in a name = Unaitwaje a Swahili book of 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)
- Aasif Sheikhb. 1960INIndian actor
- Hameed Sheikhb. 1969PKPakistani actor and producer
- Fauziah Latiffb. 1970MYnot in their usual nameMalaysian recording artist, actress
- Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikhb. 1970GBBritish lawyer (born 1970)
- Sheikh Bashir Uddinb. 1974BDBangladeshi businessman
- Muhammad Abbas Sheikhb. 1975INIndian insurgency leader, 1979–2021
- Aamina Sheikhb. 1981USPakistani actress
- Shaheer Sheikhb. 1984INIndian actor (born 1984)
- Naezyb. 1993INnot in their usual nameIndian rapper and hip-hop artist
- Abdullah Sheikhb. 1998NONorwegian cricketer
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 59 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 3.4K | #2,095 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 1.4K | #117 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 784 | #1,543 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 392 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Sheikh mean, and where does it come from?
- A Muslim surname based on Arabic shaikh ‘political or spiritual leader’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Sheikh?
- In the etymology graph, Sheik is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Sheikh have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 2.6 million people named Sekh, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Sheikh?
- In Norway, the national register counted 784 people named Sheikh, about 1 in 7.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Sheikh compared with other names?
- In India, Sheikh is the 22nd most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sheikh?
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/sheikhThe 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, “Sheikh” — the 22nd most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.