Sedef
given name · Latin script
Meaning: nacre, mother-of-pearl (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/sedef/(machine-generated) Turkish · model-generated
Sedef is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country: 138 people, counted by the Meertens NVB.
- NLNetherlands1 in 125K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 210K
- SESweden1 in 255K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 87 (measured from records)
- 1 in 125K (inferred from the name graph)
138 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Sedef
- Turkish:/sedef/(machine-generated) model-generated
Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)nacre, mother-of-pearl
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Sedef 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 138 | 1 in 125K | 138 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | 40 | 1 in 255K | 40 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 28 | 1 in 210K | 28 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 20 | 1 in 1.9M | 20 | — | — |
| MD Moldova | 2 | 1 in 1.7M | 2 | — | — |
138 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names); e-services.md — living population register. 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)Sedef is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Turkish, Midye ve istiridye gibi deniz hayvanlarının kabuğunda bulunan pırıltılı, beyaz, gök kuşağı renkli değerli madde.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
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)- Sedef Ecerb. 1965TRTurkish-French novelist (born 1965)
- Sedef Avcıb. 1982TRTurkish actor and fashion model (born 1982)
- Sedef Şahinb. 1992TRTurkish actor (born 1992)
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)31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Sedef mean, and where does it come from?
- nacre, mother-of-pearl Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Sedef?
- In the etymology graph, Sadaf is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sedef?
- In Turkish /sedef/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Sedef a male or female name?
- Sedef is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- Which countries have the most people named Sedef?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 138 people named Sedef, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Moldova; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Sedef most common?
- Sedef is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 125 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Sedef?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 138 people named Sedef, about 1 in 125 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Sedef?
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/sedefThe 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, “Sedef” — ranked 4541st in the Netherlands (Meertens NVB). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.