염
surname · Hangul script
Meaning: salt (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country · latest register: KOSIS 2015 Census, 2015
/jʌ̹m/(recorded in a dictionary) Korean · from Wiktionary
염 is a surname written in the Hangul script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country: 69,428 people, counted by KOSIS 2015 Census in 2015, which ranks it 55th. 염 is also written Yeom in Latin.
- KRSouth Korea1 in 747(measured from records)
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 3.3Kas Yeom
- USUnited States1 in 945Kas Yeom
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 염 itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 121 (measured from records)
- 1 in 747 (inferred from the name graph)
69,428 people, 2015
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
South Korea
measured from records inferred from the name graph
염 in other scripts: Latin
(measured from records)Locally spelled Yeom in US United States, SG Singapore, PK Pakistan and 1 more.
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.
How to pronounce 염
- Korean:/jʌ̹m/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)salt
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname 염 is found
(measured from records)염 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #52 | 69,428 | 1 in 747 | 69K | 염 | 121 |
| KP North Korea | — | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 1 | — | 5 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 211K | — | Yeom | 1 |
| US United States | — | 352as Yeom | 1 in 945K | 417 | Yeom | 119 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈55 est. | ≈1 in 1.2M | — | Yeom | 5 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 855K | — | Yeom | 7 |
69,428 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)염 is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In okm, goat
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.
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)5 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 1 country.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name 염 mean, and where does it come from?
- salt Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce 염?
- In Korean /jʌ̹m/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname 염?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 69 thousand people named 염, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled 염. After it come North Korea, Pakistan, United States and South Africa; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is 염 most common?
- 염 is densest in South Korea, where the national register counts about 1 in 747 people carrying it.
- How common is the name 염?
- In South Korea, the national register counted 69,428 people named 염 in 2015, about 1 in 747 residents.
- How common is 염 compared with other names?
- In South Korea, 염 is the 52nd most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about 염?
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/%EC%97%BCThe 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, “염” — ranked 55th in South Korea (KOSIS 2015 Census, 2015). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.