Sama
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Two-character Korean surname; Chinese equivalent Sima
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsɑmə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sama is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 11th most common surname.
- EGEgypt≈1 in 19K(inferred from the name graph)
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 476as Sharma
- INIndia1 in 662as Sharma
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 Sama 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.
- India (measured from records)
- #65 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 466 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
2,002,549 named Sharma
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Egypt, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Sharma in IN India, US United States, MY Malaysia and 1 more, Saima in PK Pakistan, AE United Arab Emirates and Seema in AU Australia.
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)
Two-character Korean surname; Chinese equivalent Sima.
Sources 1
- Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sama 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #11 | 2,002,549as Sharma | 1 in 662 | 2M | Sharma | 387 |
| BD Bangladesh | #139 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | listed | Sharma | 77 |
| US United States | — | 28,559as Sharma | 1 in 12K | 112K | Sharma | 466 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 476 | — | Saima | 70 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | listed | Saima | 99 |
| MY Malaysia | #697 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Sharma | 72 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 103 | Seema | 109 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 19K | listed | Sama | 85 |
2,002,549 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present). 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)
Sama 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 Swedish, Sama är ett arabiskt namn som betyder ’himmel’.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
name of many men (P); Ganefa (N); Kala (N);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In Arabic, heaven, sky (see surat al-Tariq 86:1)
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
name of many men (P); Balarama (N);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In Arabic, heaven, sky
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
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)
- Sama Raena Alshaibib. 1973IQIraqi artist
- Sama El Masryb. 1976EGEgyptian actress, singer and dancer
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 86 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #21,117 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 854 | #28,049 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 654 | #7,511 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 644 | #33,425 |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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
- How do you pronounce Sama?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsɑmə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Sama mean, and where does it come from?
- Two-character Korean surname; Chinese equivalent Sima. Recorded by Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary.
- Is Sama a male or female name?
- Sama is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Sama have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 2.0 million people named Sharma, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Sama?
- In India, the national register counted 2,002,549 people named Sharma, about 1 in 662 residents.
- How common is Sama compared with other names?
- In India, Sama is the 11th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sama?
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/samaThe 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, “Sama” — the 11th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.