Shyam

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘black’, ‘dark’, ‘beautiful’, a byname of Krishna

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

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

Shyam is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In India it is the 83rd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 2.7Kas Sam(measured from records)
  • NPNepal≈1 in 385
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates≈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 Shyam 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)

121,443 named Sam, 2020

#784 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
290 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 385 (inferred from the name graph)

Nepal, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ShyamLatin(measured from records)
শ্যামBengali(measured from records)
ชยามThai(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sham in SY Syria and Syam in AE United Arab Emirates.

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)

Sanskrit: ‘black’, ‘dark’, ‘beautiful’, a byname of Krishna. Shyama ° Feminine form of sHyam, also meaning ‘night’; a byname of Durga, the APPENDIX: . INDIAN APPENDIX: INDIAN wife of Shiva. It is also the name of a Jain goddess.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Shyam 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 Shyam is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—121,443as Sam1 in 2.7K112KShyam290
NP Nepal—≈79,000 est.≈1 in 3857Shyam75
ID Indonesia—≈17,000 est.≈1 in 15KlistedShyam35
SY Syria—≈11,000 est.≈1 in 1.7K—Sham10
SE Sweden—11,277as Sam1 in 90511KShyam14
AE United Arab Emirates#995≈3,400 est.≈1 in 2.9K—Syam40
NL Netherlands—471 in 368K11KShyam25
IN India#83——6.8KShyam259

121,443 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling sam. 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)

Shyam is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Shyām

  • Arabic given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates

    Languages: Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew

    Also written שיאם, Shÿâm, Shyâm, Shiam

  • Russian given name18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Russia

    Languages: Russian, Croatian, Czech

    Also written Шьям, Шям, Şhyam, Šhýäm

  • Polish given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Poland, United Kingdom

    Also written Sĥýäm, Śȟÿäm

  • Italian given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Italy, United Kingdom

    Also written Shyām

35 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)

Shyam 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 English, from Sanskrit śyāma, 'dark; black; dusky'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In English, A male given name of Indian usage.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1850190019502000Shyam Sundar Chakravarthy, b. 1869Shyam Nandan Prasad Mishra, b. 1920Shyam Benegal, b. 1934Shyam Bihari Misra, b. 1938Shyam Sunder, b. 1944Shyam Saran, b. 1946Shyam Manav, b. 1951Shyam Ramsay, b. 1952Shyam Selvadurai, b. 1965

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)

Informalनमस्ते Shyam जी,Hi Shyam, (English)

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 45 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Shyam
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—23K#250
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198413K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198212K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198312K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)199312K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198512K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)198711K—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)199211K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.3K#6,794
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—58#12,394
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202050#6,794
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—47#6,964

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

How do you pronounce Shyam?
A machine transcription gives /ʃiəm/ (IPA) for Hindi.
Where does the name Shyam come from?
Sanskrit: ‘black’, ‘dark’, ‘beautiful’, a byname of Krishna. Shyama ° Feminine form of sHyam, also meaning ‘night’; a byname of Durga, the APPENDIX: . INDIAN APPENDIX: INDIAN wife of Shiva. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
What does the name Shyam mean?
Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘black’, ‘dark’, ‘beautiful’, a byname of Krishna.
Is Shyam a male or female name?
Shyam is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What are other forms of the name Shyam?
In the etymology graph, Shyama is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Shyam have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Sam, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Shyam?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 47 people named Shyam, about 1 in 368 thousand residents.
How common is Shyam compared with other names?
In India, Shyam is the 83rd most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Shyam?

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

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, “Shyam” — the 83rd most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Shyam parses inside a full name →