Sym
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sɪm/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sym is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Russian Сым (Sym).
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 228K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 268K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 515K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 89 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 228K (inferred from the name graph)
≈210 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Borrowed from Russian Сым (Sym).
Sources 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sym 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 268K | — | Sym | 14 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 228K | — | Sym | 8 |
| US United States | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 2.3M | listed | Sym | 89 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 527K | 92 | Sym | 59 |
| IT Italy | ≈57 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Sym | 2 |
| AU Australia | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 515K | — | Sym | 34 |
| PL Poland | 33 | 1 in 1.2M | 19 | — | — |
| SG Singapore | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 545K | — | Sym | 5 |
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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Sym is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In enm, a diminutive of the male given names Simeon or Simon, equivalent to English Sim
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In hsb, first-person singular present of być
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, Sym (a river in Russia)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gv, interest
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)
- John Munro Symb. 1839GBBritish military officer (1839-1919)
- Igo Symb. 1896ATPolish-Austrian actor (1896–1941)
- Antoni Symb. 1911UALieutenant of the Polish Air Force, Flying Officer of the Royal Air Force (1911-1941)
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 13 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 92 | #34,906 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 19 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 19 | #93,790 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 14 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 14 | #112,927 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Sym mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Russian Сым (Sym). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Sym?
- A machine transcription gives /sɪm/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Sym have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 211 people named Sym in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sym.
- How common is the name Sym?
- In Poland, the national register counted 33 people named Sym in 2026, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Sym?
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/symThe 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, “Sym”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.