Begam
surname · Latin script
Meaning: lady; woman of rank; wife
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/bɛɡəm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Begam is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- INIndia1 in 179K(measured from records)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 278as Begum
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 6Kas Begum
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 Begam 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.
- Bangladesh (inferred from the name graph)
- #181 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 260 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 68K (inferred from the name graph)
≈580,000 named Begum, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sri Lanka, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Begum in BD Bangladesh, PK Pakistan, GB United Kingdom and 4 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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
lady; woman of rank; wife
Sources 1
- Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Begam 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BD Bangladesh | #1 | ≈580,000 est. | ≈1 in 278 | 3K | Begum | 129 |
| PK Pakistan | #17 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | 5 | Begum | 74 |
| US United States | — | 12,255as Begum | 1 in 27K | 20K | Begum | 260 |
| GB United Kingdom | #587 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6K | — | Begum | 189 |
| IN India | #32 | 7,393 | 1 in 179K | 7.4K | Begam | 175 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #311 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Begum | 55 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,300as Begum | 1 in 4.2K | 1.3K | Begum | 20 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #505 | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Begam | 13 |
| BH Bahrain | #156 | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 6.8K | — | Begum | 9 |
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; This page provides data on the frequency and ranking of names in Bangladesh, published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Stati; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
- Richard Begamb. 19501950-
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 17 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 778K | #13 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 7.4K | #1,192 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 186 | #102,982 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 124 | #135,593 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #62,487 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Begam mean, and where does it come from?
- lady; woman of rank; wife Recorded by Muslim baby names (our 2,000 meaningful and beautiful names for boys and girls) English-Urdu with Roman.
- How do you pronounce Begam?
- A machine transcription gives /bɛɡəm/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Begam have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 584 thousand people named Begum in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Begam?
- In India, the national register counted 7,393 people named Begam, about 1 in 179 thousand residents.
- How common is Begam compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Begam is the most common surname of 12,312 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Begam?
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/begamThe 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, “Begam” — the most common surname in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.