Zahm

surname · Latin script

Meaning: tame

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Zahm is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 290K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 375K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

888 people, 2010

Sources
23 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 290K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

tame

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Zahm 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 Zahm is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States8881 in 375K932Zahm23
CH Switzerland291 in 290K29—2
MA Morocco———Zahm8
EG Egypt———Zahm3
PS Palestine———Zahm2
SY Syria———Zahm3

888 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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).

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000John Augustine Zahm, b. 1851Alain Zahm, b. 1947Daniel S. Zahm, b. 1950Olivier Zahm, b. 1964

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)

FormalDear Zahm,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Zahm
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020932#27,401
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010888#27,228
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000883#26,078
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202429#28,044
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia surname 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 Zahm mean, and where does it come from?
tame Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Zahm?
A machine transcription gives /ˈzæm/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Zahm have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 888 people named Zahm, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zahm.
Where is Zahm most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Zahm is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 290 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Zahm?
In the United States, the national register counted 888 people named Zahm in 2010, about 1 in 375 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Zahm?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Zahm”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zahm parses inside a full name →