Sultan

given name · Turkish · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Sultan is a given name, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country, where it is the 27th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Turkish and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary'.

rarermore common
  • TRTürkiye1 in 429◐
  • CYCyprus1 in 959
  • ATAustria1 in 7K

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

≈207K ●

across 11 countries

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
126 ●

2.2M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 429 ◐

Türkiye

Spellings & scripts●

SultanLatin · Turkish●1.6M records
ᲡულთანGeorgian · Georgian●704 records
СултанCyrillic · Tajik●39 records
סולטאןHebrew · Yiddish●0 records

Locally spelled Şultan in TM Turkmenistan and Sultán in ES Spain.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Sultan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#27191,0662.1M rec.1 in 429191KSultan78
DE Germany#88612,96214K rec.——Sultan92
KZ Kazakhstan—11,206△621 rec.1 in 1.7K11KSultan21
SY Syria—3,7265.2K rec.——Sultan12
NL Netherlands—3,5611.9K rec.—255Sultan33
US United States—2,5831.9K rec.1 in 129K4.1KSultan126
IN India—2,544946 rec.—1.3KSultan57
AT Austria#6832,3782K rec.—79Sultan31
CY Cyprus#1012,3752.8K rec.——Sultan15
BE Belgium—1,7841.8K rec.—34Sultan22
PK Pakistan—1,129359 rec.——Sultan55
SE Sweden—974560 rec.1 in 10K974Sultan19

Roughly 191K people in Türkiye bear this name (about 1 in 429). 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●

  • Turkish1.6M64%
  • Hindi246K10%
  • Kurdish201K8%
  • English83K3%
  • 80K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Turkish1,604,43964%
Hindi245,58810%
Kurdish201,4998%
English83,1443%
80,3853%

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◐

Sultan is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name526K records spelled Sultan54 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Urdu

    Also written সুলতান, Sultaan, Shultan, Sult̤ān, Shultaan

  • Arabic given name146K records spelled Sultan156 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Saudi Arabia, India, United States, Pakistan

    Also written Sulṭān, Sültan, Sultán, Sultàn, Sültän

  • a separate given name108K records spelled Sultan10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, United States

    Also written Sulṭān, Sult̤ān, Ṣulṭān, Sulṭân, Sulṭan

  • Indonesian given name38K records spelled Sultan9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Indonesia, Türkiye, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Sultan, Sultan', Sūltan, Şultan, Sültän

  • Russian given name12K records spelled Sultan63 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek

    Also written Султан, Сұлтан, Сультан, Şultan, S'Ultan

72 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●

Sultan 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 Arabic, ‘ruler, authority’; title used as a personal name.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In Turkish, A monarchic title for Sunni Muslim monarchs.

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

  • In Turkish, 1. Padişah, hükümdar. 2. Hükümdar ailesinden olan kadınlara verilen ad. 3. Sevilen, beğenilen, baş tacı edilen.

    as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)

  • In English, sovereign of Turkey

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Swahili, Swahili: 'ruler'.

    as a nameAfrican 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.

Over time●

05001K1.5K2K1900192019401960198020001.7K · 1993

Show as table
Sultan in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
18991
19001
19142
19163
19173
19188
191912
192015
192114
192233
192323
192448
192528
192648
192774
192859
1929102
193066
1931105
1932175
1933132
1934225
1935157
1936216
1937220
1938195
1939337
1940285
1941354
1942444
1943391
1944522
1945395
1946528
1947602
1948507
1949676
1950583
1951701
1952827
1953635
1954949
1955690
1956913
1957960
1958857
19591,122
1960896
19611,049
19621,230
1963952
19641,262
19651,036
19661,316
19671,228
19681,134
19691,208
19701,203
19711,084
19721,399
19731,246
19741,186
19751,108
19761,290
1977984
19781,001
1979952
19801,043
19811,161
19821,319
19831,248
19841,238
19851,111
19861,045
19871,135
19881,165
19891,275
19901,323
19911,478
19921,585
19931,730
19941,427
19951,198
1996586
1997551
1998347
199921
20002
20011
20021
20077
200866
20092
201036
201144
201219
201315
2014103
201546
20161
20172

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 101 years between 1899–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

12001400160018002000Sultan Mahmud, b. 1350Sultan Agung, b. 1593Sultan Bahu, b. 1630Sultan bin Ahmad Al Busaidi, b. 1800Amet-khan Sultan, b. 1920Sultan bin Abdulaziz, b. 1926Sultan Ali Keshtmand, b. 1935Sultan bin Salman Al Saud, b. 1956Sultan Kösen, b. 1982Sultan Al-Brake, b. 1996

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 91 sources across 47 countries.

Official registers attesting Sultan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
TR TürkiyeTÜİK NIP — most used given names2025191K#17
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.1K#7,737
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.4K#9,648
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.6K#5,981
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.4K#12,070
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.3K#4,458
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—974#1,724
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—506#2,479
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2012450#3,577
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—372#10,152
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—372#10,126
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—336#4,437

Reference works 6

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 · 591 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sultan?
We estimate roughly 207 thousand people bear Sultan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Sultan have the most bearers?
We estimate about 191 thousand people bear Sultan in Türkiye, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled sultan.
Where is Sultan most common?
Sultan is densest in Türkiye, where the national register counts about 1 in 429 people carrying it.
How common is Sultan compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Sultan is the 27th most common given name of 294,597 given names recorded there.
Is Sultan a male or female name?
Sultan 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.
What does the name Sultan mean?
Recorded meaning: from Slavic and German forms related to soldän 'mercenary'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sultan

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, “Sultan” — the 27th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sultan parses inside a full name →