Şem
given name · Latin script
Meaning: candle
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Şem is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- SYSyria≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 104K
- USUnited States1 in 2.7Kas Sam
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 Şem 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 107 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
121,443 named Sam, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Syria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Sam in US United States, SE Sweden, CZ Czechia.
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)
candle
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Şem 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 121,443as Sam | 1 in 2.7K | 112K | Sam | 107 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11,277as Sam | 1 in 905 | 11K | Sam | 9 |
| SY Syria | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Şem | 5 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 104K | — | Şem | 11 |
| FI Finland | — | 708as Sam | 1 in 7.9K | 972 | — | 4 |
| NO Norway | — | 707as Sam | 1 in 7.7K | 2.4K | — | 2 |
| DK Denmark | — | 598as Sam | 1 in 9.8K | 598 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | #516 | 154as Sam | 1 in 69K | 154 | Sam | 61 |
121,443 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); MVČR — living population register 2017; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 1 sources across 0 countries.
Reference works 1
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
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 Şem mean, and where does it come from?
- candle Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Şem a male or female name?
- Şem 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.
- In which country does Şem have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Sam, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Şem?
- In the United States, the national register counted 121,443 people named Sam in 2020, about 1 in 2.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Şem compared with other names?
- In Czechia, Şem is the 516th most common given name of 16,679 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Şem?
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/%C5%9FemThe 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, “Şem” — the 516th most common given name in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.