Shmuel

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ʃmʲʉəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Shmuel is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Israel it is the 20th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • ILIsrael≈1 in 342as שמואל(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 588as Samuel
  • RORomania≈1 in 762as שמואל

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 Shmuel 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.

United States (measured from records)

566,085 named Samuel, 2020

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
209 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 620K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

שמואלHebrew(measured from records)
SamuelLatin(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled שמואל in US United States, IL Israel, RO Romania.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Shmuel 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.

Where Shmuel is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—566,085as Samuel1 in 588565Kשמואל209
BR Brazil—522,131as Samuel1 in 405522K—3
ES Spain—61,517as Samuel1 in 81362K—18
RO Romania#53≈28,000 est.≈1 in 762—שמואל8
IL Israel#20≈25,000 est.≈1 in 3425.8Kשמואל126
SE Sweden—22,803as Samuel1 in 44723K—7
FI Finland—21,683as Samuel1 in 25727K—6
GB United Kingdom—≈110 est.≈1 in 620K11Shmuel50

566,085 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling samuel. 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); CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); 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); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Shmuel is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Israel, Germany, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Sh'Muel, Śhmüël, שמואל

  • Chinese given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Taiwan, United Kingdom

    Also written Shmueli

  • Arabic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Yemen, United States, Israel, Libya

    Also written Shmūēl

40 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Shmuel is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Jewish: modern Hebrew form of SAMUEL .

    as a word

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)

1850190019502000Samuel Cohen, b. 1870Samuel Joseph Agnon, b. 1887Samuel Dayan, b. 1891Shmuel Rodensky, b. 1902Leonard Chess, b. 1917Shmuel Eisenstadt, b. 1923Shmuel Gonen, b. 1930Shmulik Kraus, b. 1935Shmuel Winograd, b. 1936Sam Vaknin, b. 1961
  • Samuel Cohenb. 1870MDMoldovan composer; composer of the Israeli National Anthem (1870–1940)
  • Samuel Joseph Agnonb. 1887ILUkrainian-born Israeli Hebrew writer, Nobel laureate in Literature (1888–1970)
  • Samuel Dayanb. 1891ILIsraeli politician (1891–1968)
  • Shmuel Rodenskyb. 1902LTIsraeli Jewish actor (1902–1989)
  • Leonard Chessb. 1917USnot in their usual namePolish-American record company executive (1917-1969)
  • Shmuel Eisenstadtb. 1923ILIsraeli sociologist (1923–2010)
  • Shmuel Gonenb. 1930ILIsraeli general
  • Shmulik Krausb. 1935ILnot in their usual nameIsraeli musician (1935–2013)
  • Shmuel Winogradb. 1936ILIsraeli computer scientist (1936-2019)
  • Sam Vakninb. 1961ILnot in their usual nameIsraeli writer

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 37 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Shmuel
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)200211#134,717
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—8#134,434
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 are other forms of the name Shmuel?
In the etymology graph, Samuel, Ismail and Ismael are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Shmuel?
A machine transcription gives /ʃmʲʉəɫ/ (IPA) for Hebrew.
Is Shmuel a male or female name?
Shmuel 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 Shmuel 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.
How common is the name Shmuel?
In the United States, the national register counted 566,085 people named Samuel in 2020, about 1 in 588 residents.
How common is Shmuel compared with other names?
In Israel, Shmuel is the 20th most common given name of 107,303 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Shmuel?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shmuel

The 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, “Shmuel” — the 20th most common given name in Israel. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Shmuel parses inside a full name →