Sahara
loc · Latin script
Meaning: Arabic: 'the desert, emptiness, wilderness'; Aramaic/Hebrew female: 'moon'
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/səhɛɹə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sahara is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- EHWestern Sahara≈1 in 575(inferred from the name graph)
- MAMorocco≈1 in 8.2K
- INIndia1 in 2.6Mas Saharan
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 Sahara 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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 249 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 575 (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Western Sahara, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Shahara in BD Bangladesh and Sahara' in 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)
Arabic: 'the desert, emptiness, wilderness'; Aramaic/Hebrew female: 'moon'
Sources 1
- African Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Sahara, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sahara 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | listed | Sahara' | 100 |
| MA Morocco | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | — | Sahara | 10 |
| BD Bangladesh | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 120K | — | Shahara | 27 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Sahara | 7 |
| EH Western Sahara | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 575 | — | Sahara | 2 |
| IN India | 512as Saharan | 1 in 2.6M | 512 | Sahara | 106 |
| MR Mauritania | ≈61 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Sahara | 1 |
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. 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)
Sahara is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, desert, Africa
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Del desierto
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
In Portuguese, Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of Saara.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A desert in North Africa and the largest hot desert in the world.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, Sahara (a major desert in North Africa)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Kenji Saharab. 1932JPJapanese actor
- Makoto Saharab. 1932JPJapanese archaeologist and prehistorian
- Sahara Khatunb. 1943BDBangladeshi politician
- Tetsuya Saharab. 1963JPJapanese historian
- Sahara Kniteb. 1975GBBritish Indian webcam model, pornographic film actress, and television actress
- Sahara Davenportb. 1984USAmerican drag queen and reality television personality (1984-2012)
- Maiko Saharab. 1986JPJapanese actress
- Sahara Sunday Spainb. 1991USAmerican poet
- Sahara Beckb. 1996AUAustralian singer and songwriter
- Sahara AleNPactress
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 71 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | India Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive) | — | 798 | #2,997 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 6 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 1 | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 Sahara mean, and where does it come from?
- Arabic: 'the desert, emptiness, wilderness'; Aramaic/Hebrew female: 'moon' Recorded by African Names.
- How do you pronounce Sahara?
- A machine transcription gives /səhɛɹə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Sahara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Sahara in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sahara'.
- How common is the name Sahara?
- In India, the national register counted 512 people named Saharan, about 1 in 2.6 million residents.
What do you want to know about Sahara?
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/saharaThe 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, “Sahara”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.