Syah

surname · Latin script

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

Syah is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Check; an exclamation that shows that the king piece in chess is in danger.

rarermore common
  • IDIndonesia≈1 in 2.2K(inferred from the name graph)
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.5K
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 30K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)

≈120,000 people, est.

Sources
193 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Indonesia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Check; an exclamation that shows that the king piece in chess is in danger.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Syah 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 Syah is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ID Indonesia#160≈120,000 est.≈1 in 2.2KlistedSyah193
MY Malaysia#769≈5,900 est.≈1 in 5.5K—Syah45
ZA South Africa—≈250 est.≈1 in 225K—Syah2
SG Singapore—≈210 est.≈1 in 30K—Syah17
PH Philippines—≈150 est.≈1 in 737K—Syah5
IN India—171 in 78M17Syah9
QA Qatar—≈15 est.≈1 in 158K—Syah4

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. 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)

Syah is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Singapore, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written S'Yah, Syâh, Syåh

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Syäh

39 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)

Syah 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 Indonesian, king (a male monarch; a man who heads a monarchy)

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

  • In omq-sjq, only

    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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Syah
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—17#87,325

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Syah mean, and where does it come from?
Check; an exclamation that shows that the king piece in chess is in danger. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Syah have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 122 thousand people named Syah in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled syah.
How common is the name Syah?
In India, the national register counted 17 people named Syah, about 1 in 78 million residents.
How common is Syah compared with other names?
In Indonesia, Syah is the 160th most common surname of 451,395 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Syah?

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

The same 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), 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, “Syah” — the 160th most common surname in Indonesia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Syah parses inside a full name →