Syed
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Alternative spelling of Sayyid
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Syed is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common given name.
- PKPakistan≈1 in 181(inferred from the name graph)
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 438
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 472
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 Syed 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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- #941 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 397 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 181 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Alternative spelling of Sayyid.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Syed 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #4 | ≈1,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 181 | listed | Syed | 197 |
| BD Bangladesh | #26 | ≈340,000 est. | ≈1 in 472 | listed | Syed | 158 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 811 | listed | Syed | 51 |
| CN China | — | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Syed | 20 |
| MY Malaysia | #109 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 645 | — | Syed | 92 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #16 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 438 | — | Syed | 157 |
| US United States | — | 20,064 | 1 in 17K | 20K | Syed | 397 |
| BH Bahrain | #47 | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 320 | — | Syed | 49 |
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. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omarb. 1211UZnot in their usual nameGovernor of Yunnan (1211-1279)
- Syed Ameer Alib. 1849INIndian Muslim jurist (1849-1928)
- Sayyid Darwishb. 1892EGnot in their usual nameEgyptian musician and composer (1892–1923)
- Sayyid Qutbb. 1906EGnot in their usual nameEgyptian political theorist and revolutionary (1906–1966)
- Syed Sharifuddin Pirzadab. 1923PKPakistani politician (1923–2017)
- Syed Nazrul Islamb. 1925BDBangladeshi politician (1925–1975)
- Syed Ahmedb. 1945INGovernor of Jharkhand, Indian politician, author (1945–2015)
- Syed Kamallb. 1967GBBritish politician (born 1967)
- Mojtaba Khameneib. 1969IRnot in their usual name3rd Supreme Dictator of Iran since 2026
- Skai Jacksonb. 2002USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
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 68 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,513 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.7K | #3,657 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.3K | #5,969 |
Reference works 6
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 does the name Syed mean, and where does it come from?
- Alternative spelling of Sayyid. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Syed have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 million people named Syed in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled syed.
- Is Syed a male or female name?
- Syed 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.
- How common is the name Syed?
- In the United States, the national register counted 20,064 people named Syed in 2020, about 1 in 17 thousand residents.
- How common is Syed compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Syed is the 4th most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Syed?
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/syedThe 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, “Syed” — the 4th most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.