Sesay
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Sesay is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Sierra Leone it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Arabic, written in the Latin script.
- MYMalaysia1 in 45K◐
- GBUnited Kingdom1 in 100K
- USUnited States1 in 133K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈3.0K ●
- Sources
- 223 ●
- 1 in 52K ◐
across 11 countries
23K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 2,506 | 16K rec. | 1 in 133K | 3.6K | Sesay | 223 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 2,335 | 1.5K rec. | — | — | Sesay | 106 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 1,224 | 1.2K rec. | — | — | Sesay | 4 |
| EG Egypt | — | 811 | 805 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 7 |
| FR France | — | 651 | 468 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 83 |
| AU Australia | — | 471 | 432 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 52 |
| SL Sierra Leone | #3 | 456 | 1K rec. | — | 132 | Sesay | 34 |
| CA Canada | — | 253 | 251 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 32 |
| DE Germany | — | 230 | 203 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 49 |
| TR Türkiye | — | 153 | 158 rec. | — | — | Sesay | 6 |
| ES Spain | — | 111△ | 48 rec. | 1 in 451K | 111 | Sesay | 27 |
| NO Norway | — | 106△ | 30 rec. | 1 in 52K | 106 | — | 15 |
Roughly 2.5K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 133K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English20K63%
- Arabic2.4K8%
- French1.7K5%
- Spanish1.1K4%
- Welsh8983%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 20,344 | 63% |
| Arabic | 2,440 | 8% |
| French | 1,732 | 5% |
| Spanish | 1,127 | 4% |
| Welsh | 898 | 3% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Notable people with this name●
- Issa Sesayb. 1970SLSierra Leonean war criminal
- Ansu Sesayb. 1976USAmerican basketball player
- Isha Sesayb. 1976GBBritish journalist of Sierra Leonean descent. From 2005 to 2018, she worked as an anchor and correspondent for CNN International
- Ola Sesayb. 1979SLSierra Leonean sprinter
- Benjamin Sesayb. 1981SLSierra Leonean footballer
- Israel Sesayb. 1990SLAmerican soccer player
- Adel Sesayb. 1990SLSierra Leonean male sprinter
- Alie Sesayb. 1993GBBritish association football player
- Mawa Sesayb. 2005NONorwegian association football player
- Fanta Sesayactress
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●
Attested in 30 sources across 14 countries.
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 30 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Sesay?
- We estimate roughly 3.0 thousand people bear Sesay (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Sesay have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 2.5 thousand people bear Sesay in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled sesay.
- How common is Sesay compared with other names?
- In Sierra Leone, Sesay is the 3rd most common surname of 472 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sesayThe 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. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Sesay” — the 3rd most common surname in Sierra Leone. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.