Yåm

surname · Latin script

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

Yåm is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Portuguese inhame and Spanish ñame, likely from Wolof ñàmbi (“cassava”) or a related word. The term was spelled yam as early as 1657. Doublet of name.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 184K(measured from records)
  • INIndia1 in 448K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 617K

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.

India (measured from records)

2,960 people

Sources
45 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 184K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Yam in IN India, US United States, ID Indonesia.

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)

Derivation of Yåm: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Yåm
  1. Portugueseinhame(measured from records)
  2. Wolofñàmbi“cassava”(measured from records)

From Portuguese inhame and Spanish ñame, likely from Wolof ñàmbi (“cassava”) or a related word. The term was spelled yam as early as 1657. Doublet of name.

Sources 3

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Yåm 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 Yåm is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India2,9601 in 448K3KYam10
US United States1,8081 in 184K1.9KYam13
NL Netherlands281 in 617K28——
ID Indonesia≈26 est.≈1 in 10M—Yam45
PL Poland91 in 4.3M65——
NO Norway81 in 683K20——
CH Switzerland31 in 2.8M3——

2,960 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)

Yåm is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Sinhala surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Malaysia

    Also written Yam, Yama, Yamu, Yami, Yäm

3 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Yåm under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Yåm mean, and where does it come from?
From Portuguese inhame and Spanish ñame, likely from Wolof ñàmbi (“cassava”) or a related word. The term was spelled yam as early as 1657. Doublet of name. Recorded by Digital Pāḷi Dictionary and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
In which country does Yåm have the most bearers?
In India, the national register counted about 3.0 thousand people named Yåm, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled yam.
Where is Yåm most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Yåm is densest in the United States — about 1 in 184 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Yåm?
In India, the national register counted 2,960 people named Yåm, about 1 in 448 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Yåm?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/y%C3%A5m

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, “Yåm”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Yåm parses inside a full name →