Ham

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Ham is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 50th most common surname. Recorded meaning: (i) Person from Ham, Highland region, meaning ‘homestead’; (ii) also from Ham, various southern English places, from Old English hamm.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 10K(measured from records)
  • KRSouth Korea1 in 643as 함
  • DEGermany≈1 in 10Kas Hamm

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 Ham 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.

South Korea (measured from records)

80,659 named 함, 2015

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
425 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

HammLatin(measured from records)
หม๊ะThai(measured from records)
හිමSinhala(measured from records)
ΑμGreek(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Hamm in US United States, GB United Kingdom, DE Germany and 1 more, 함 in KR South Korea and Hima 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)

(i) Person from Ham, Highland region, meaning ‘homestead’; (ii) also from Ham, various southern English places, from Old English hamm.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ham 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.

Where Ham is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
KR South Korea#5080,659as 함1 in 64386K함137
US United States#72626,726as Hamm1 in 12K27KHamm425
DE Germany#789≈7,900 est.≈1 in 10K—Hamm145
ID Indonesia—≈5,900 est.≈1 in 46KlistedHima58
GB United Kingdom#979≈3,900 est.≈1 in 17K4Hamm177
CA Canada#672≈3,200 est.≈1 in 12K1Hamm145
NL Netherlands#1391,7051 in 10K1.7KHam104
AL Albania—≈1,100 est.≈1 in 2.7K796——

80,659 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ham is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname29 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, United States, Argentina, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Hàm, Hãm, Hâm, Häm, Hăm

  • Hindi surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Pakistan, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Hàm, Hâm, Häm, Hãm, Hầm

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Há̂m, Häm, Haṃ, Hàm, Hám

  • Malay surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, United States, Netherlands

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Hàm, Hăm, Ĥäm, Häm, Hâm

61 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Ham 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.

  • Derived from the Hebrew 'Cham', possibly meaning 'hot' or 'burnt'.

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • Ancestral figure of the Hamitic peoples; often associated with the nations of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Canaan.

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • A rare biblical name, historically uncommon in modern usage.

    as a nameBiblical Names Compiled Database

  • In German, from Germ. *ham- 'cover, clothe'; also from ON/nds. ham 'bay, shore, enclosed field'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In English, from Middle English hamm, ‘dweller on the flat, low-lying land by a stream’; first attested Robert de la Hamme 1275 RH (Sx)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

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)

1850190019502000Ham Tae-young, b. 1872Al Ham, b. 1925Johnny Lee, b. 1946Pete Ham, b. 1947Ken Ham, b. 1951Rosalie Ham, b. 1955Su Jung Ham, b. 1962Darvin Ham, b. 1973Ham Eun-jeong, b. 1988Ham Sung-min, b. 1998
  • Ham Tae-youngb. 1872KRSouth Korean politician
  • Al Hamb. 1925USAmerican jazz musician (1925–2001)
  • Johnny Leeb. 1946USnot in their usual nameAmerican country music singer (born 1946)
  • Pete Hamb. 1947GBWelsh singer, songwriter and guitarist (1947–1975)
  • Ken Hamb. 1951AUAustralian young Earth creationist
  • Rosalie Hamb. 1955AUAustralian author, stage and radio play writer
  • Su Jung Hamb. 1962KRSouth Korean voice actress
  • Darvin Hamb. 1973USAmerican basketball player and coach
  • Ham Eun-jeongb. 1988KRSouth Korean singer and actress, member of girl group T-ara
  • Ham Sung-minb. 1998KRSouth Korean actor

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 55 sources across 35 countries.

Official registers attesting Ham
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
KR South KoreaKOSIS — 2015 census surnames201586K#49
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201017K#2,133
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202016K#2,196
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200016K#2,103
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.7K#799
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Ham mean, and where does it come from?
(i) Person from Ham, Highland region, meaning ‘homestead’; (ii) also from Ham, various southern English places, from Old English hamm. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Ham have the most bearers?
In South Korea, the national register counted about 81 thousand people named 함, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Ham most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ham is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 10 thousand people — even though South Korea holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ham?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,705 people named Ham in 2007, about 1 in 10 thousand residents.
How common is Ham compared with other names?
In South Korea, Ham is the 50th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ham?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ham

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Ham” — the 50th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ham parses inside a full name →