Syed

given name · English · Latin script

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

Syed is a given name, most frequently recorded in India. In Pakistan it is the 9th most common given name. It appears chiefly in English and Urdu, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Alternative spelling of Sayyid.

rarermore common
  • BDBangladesh1 in 270◐
  • PKPakistan1 in 419
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates1 in 1.1K

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

≈22K ●

across 7 countries

#830 ●

of 16M given names

4 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
338 ●

1.0M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 8.3K ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

SyedLatin · English●848K records
সৈয়দBengali · Bangla●897 records
ไซเอ็ดThai · Thai●37 records
사이이드Hangul · Korean●0 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sayed in AF Afghanistan.

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●

Alternative spelling of Sayyid.

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 Syed is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#2471,305,128557K rec.—40KSyed234
BD Bangladesh#171,051,96215K rec.—listedSyed151
PK Pakistan#9446,65630K rec.—listedSyed164
MY Malaysia#7938,40354K rec.——Syed98
GB United Kingdom#56734,43023K rec.—15Syed155
US United States—19,887264K rec.1 in 17K20KSyed338
AU Australia#80312,73718K rec.—6Syed159
SA Saudi Arabia#8411,6043.4K rec.——Syed118
CA Canada#77010,85812K rec.—18Syed135
AE United Arab Emirates#466,6976.2K rec.——Syed145
DE Germany—2,1252.9K rec.—1Syed104
SG Singapore#3491,6154.6K rec.——Syed88

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English848K23%
  • Urdu659K18%
  • Hindi548K15%
  • 543K15%
  • Bangla515K14%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English847,82423%
Urdu659,40418%
Hindi548,14415%
542,83415%
Bangla515,09414%

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◐

Syed is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate given name580K records spelled Syed2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, Malaysia

    Also written Syéd

  • Malay given name89K records spelled Syed9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Syëd, Syēd, Syéd, Sýëd, Syêd

  • French given name12K records spelled Syed8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, India, United Kingdom

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Syéd, Syeď, Syëd, Sÿeď, Sÿêd

  • Danish given name5.5K records spelled Syed13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish

    Also written Šyed, Syëd, Syéd, Syēd, Sýèd

62 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.

Over time●

05101520196019802000202016 · 1985

Show as table
Syed in SSB — Navn (1880–present), Norway, 1945–2025
Yearrecords
19457
19476
19495
19554
19565
19574
19595
19604
19646
19665
19675
196812
197110
19734
19744
197510
197611
197711
19787
19799
198013
19816
198212
198312
198415
198516
198615
198713
198812
198912
199016
199111
199213
199312
199411
19956
199610
19975
19987
19998
20017
20026
20039
20049
20059
20066
20099
20109
20115
20124
201311
20149
20157
201614
20177
20186
20197
20204
202116
20226
202313
202412
202510

NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 63 years between 1945–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

120014001600180020002200Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, b. 1211Syed Ameer Ali, b. 1849Sayyid Darwish, b. 1892Sayyid Qutb, b. 1906Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, b. 1923Syed Nazrul Islam, b. 1925Syed Ahmed, b. 1945Syed Kamall, b. 1967Mojtaba Khamenei, b. 1969Skai Jackson, b. 2002

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 67 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Syed
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—40K#373
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202020K#1,596
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202014K#2,513
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020109.7K#3,657
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005.3K#5,969
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.4K#1,345
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1K#1,658
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025659—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—604#2,152
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020555—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—497#2,073
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—474#8,384

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 · 581 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Syed?
We estimate roughly 22 thousand people bear Syed (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Syed have the most bearers?
Syed is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled syed.
How common is Syed compared with other names?
In India, Syed is the 247th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Syed a male or female name?
Syed is a male 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 Syed mean?
Recorded meaning: Alternative spelling of Sayyid.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/syed

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, “Syed” — the 247th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Syed parses inside a full name →