Soy

surname · Hindi · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Soy is a surname, with more bearers in India than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Hindi and Turkish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: family, kin, tribe, people.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 66K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 134K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 168K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈21K

across 11 countries

Sources
57

20K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 66K

India

Meaning & origin

family, kin, tribe, people

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Soy is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India20,02519K rec.1 in 66K20KSoy57
US United States538233 rec.1 in 618K538Soy32
ES Spain28534 rec.1 in 175K285Soy6
NL Netherlands1291 rec.1 in 134K1291
TR Türkiye118103 rec.Soy12
CH Switzerland502 rec.1 in 168K501
NO Norway221 in 249K22
BR Brazil201 in 11M20
GB United Kingdom1515 rec.Soy5
PE Peru137 rec.Soy2
AR Argentina101 in 4.5M10
BE Belgium62 rec.1 in 2M61

Roughly 20K people in India bear this name (about 1 in 66K). 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

  • Hindi50K45%
  • Turkish19K17%
  • 17K16%
  • Swahili4.8K4%
  • English4.5K4%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi50,31445%
Turkish19,46717%
17,27616%
Swahili4,8154%
English4,5284%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Soy is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Turkish surname20K records spelled Soy9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, India, Netherlands, Turkmenistan

    Languages: Turkish, Turkmen

    Also written Söy, Şoy, Şöy, Šöẙ, Ŝoy

  • Spanish surname9.4K records spelled Soy11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Mexico, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Sóy, Šöẙ, ̶̶S̶̶o̶̶y̶̶, Şoy, Sôy

  • English surname8.4K records spelled Soy22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Philippines, Germany

    Languages: English, German, Western Frisian

    Also written Soey, Şoy, Söy, Sóy, Sóý

  • Khmer surname2.4K records spelled Soy2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Cambodia, Türkiye

    Also written Söÿ

  • Thai given name1.7K records spelled Soy146 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Thai, Burmese, Lao

    Also written Shwe, จอย, ช้อย, Choi, จ้อย

  • French surname1.5K records spelled Soy8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, India

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Söy, Sóy, Sõy, Ŝōỷ, Soÿ

41 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

Soy 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 English, A common East Asian liquid sauce, made by subjecting boiled beans to long fermentation and then long digestion in salt and water.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Spanish, first-person singular present indicative of ser

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In sjm, who; whom; what (when asking someone’s name)

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

  • In Azerbaijani, stock (lineage, family, ancestry)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In pam, buddy; close male friend; boy

    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

1850190019502000Josep Soy i Cambras, b. 1888Joaquim Soy Espuña, b. 1924Xavier Soy Soler, b. 1950Janum Singh Soy, b. 1950Antoni Soy i Casals, b. 1950Cristina Soy i Aumatell, b. 1971

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 28 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Soy
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls20K#613
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls979#21
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010538#40,610
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020513#44,979
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000455#44,497
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)285#12,564
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)285#12,540
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020209#30,890
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007129#15,512
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202071#30,890
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202450#18,641
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)22#40,483

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 · 92 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Soy?
We estimate roughly 21 thousand people bear Soy (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Soy have the most bearers?
We estimate about 20 thousand people bear Soy in India, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled soy.
Where is Soy most common?
Soy is densest in India, where the national register counts about 1 in 66 thousand people carrying it.
What does the name Soy mean?
Recorded meaning: family, kin, tribe, people
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/soy

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. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

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, “Soy”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Soy parses inside a full name →