Flam
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A freak or whim; an idle fancy
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries · latest register: DZS, 2021
/flæm/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Flam is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 19K(measured from records)
- HRCroatia1 in 184K
- SESweden1 in 378K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 195 (measured from records)
- 1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
418 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A freak or whim; an idle fancy.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world
(measured from records)Flam 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 | 418 | 1 in 796K | 487 | Flam | 195 |
| NO Norway | 282 | 1 in 19K | 282 | — | 3 |
| FR France | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 446K | 17 | — | 2 |
| CA Canada | ≈82 est. | ≈1 in 506K | — | Flam | 30 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈76 est. | ≈1 in 840K | — | Flam | 7 |
| IL Israel | ≈45 est. | ≈1 in 224K | — | Flam | 10 |
| SE Sweden | 27 | 1 in 378K | 27 | — | 5 |
| HR Croatia | 23 | 1 in 184K | 27 | — | — |
418 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Flam is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, from 'Fleming/Flame'; ethnonymic
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Catalan, flan (custard dessert)
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)- Cosmus Flamb. 1899DEGerman writer (1899-1945)
- Leopold Flamb. 1912BEBelgian philosopher (1912-1995)
- Herbert Flamb. 1928USAmerican tennis player
- Harry Flamb. 1948SESwedish economist
- Helena Flamb. 1951SEPolish-born sociologist
- Gila Flamb. 1956ILIsraeli musicologist
- Faye Flamb. 1964USscience writer
- Angela Flamb. 1968ATAustrian choreographer and writer
- Aron Flamb. 1978SESwedish comedian and podcaster
- Manuel Flamb. 1979FRFrench official
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)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 487 | #47,035 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 420 | #47,485 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 418 | #50,106 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 36 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 27 | #20,101 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 27 | — |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 23 | #21,253 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 18 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 17 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 17 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 14 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Flam mean, and where does it come from?
- A freak or whim; an idle fancy. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Flam?
- In English /flæm/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Flam have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 418 people named Flam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled flam.
- Where is Flam most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Flam is densest in Norway — about 1 in 19 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Flam?
- In the United States, the national register counted 418 people named Flam in 2010, about 1 in 796 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Flam?
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/flamThe 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, “Flam”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.