Somali
given name · Latin script
Meaning: people, lang., Africa
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/soʊmɑːli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Somali is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sri Lanka than in any other country.
- GYGuyana1 in 375K(measured from records)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 1.1M
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 1.3M
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 Somali 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.
- Sri Lanka (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 49 (measured from records)
- 1 in 375K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 named Samali, est.
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Samali in LK Sri Lanka.
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)
people, lang., Africa
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Somali 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LK Sri Lanka | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Samali | 16 |
| US United States | 296as Somaly | 1 in 1.1M | 293 | Somali | 32 |
| BD Bangladesh | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Somali | 3 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 2.1M | — | Somali | 47 |
| VN Vietnam | ≈28 est. | ≈1 in 3.5M | — | Somali | 7 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | 6 | — | 1 |
| SE Sweden | 5 | 1 in 2M | 5 | — | 1 |
| GY Guyana | 2 | 1 in 375K | 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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Somali is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Afrikaans, synonym of Somaliër (“Somali, person from Somalia”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A Cushitic language spoken mainly in Somalia, eastern Ethiopia, Djibouti, and eastern Kenya.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, Somalia (a country in East Africa, in the Horn of Africa)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, masculine plural of somalo
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, Somali (language)
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
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 10 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5 | #46,718 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 2 | #592 |
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Somali mean, and where does it come from?
- people, lang., Africa Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Somali?
- A machine transcription gives /soʊmɑːli/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Somali a male or female name?
- Somali is a female 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 Somali have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Samali in Sri Lanka, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Somali most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Somali is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 375 thousand people — even though Sri Lanka holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Somali?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 5 people named Somali, about 1 in 2.0 million residents.
What do you want to know about Somali?
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/somaliThe 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, “Somali”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.