Yahya

given name · Turkish · Latin script

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

Yahya is a given name, most frequently recorded in Türkiye. In Syria it is the 55th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Turkish and Arabic, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: to live; will live. A prophet; the biblical John.

rarermore common
  • SYSyria1 in 696◐
  • MAMorocco1 in 998
  • TNTunisia1 in 1.1K

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

≈14K ●

across 9 countries

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
215 ●

489K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 5.9K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

YahyaLatin · Turkish●347K records
ЯхьяCyrillic · Russian●8.6K records
ΓιαχιαGreek · Greek●0 records

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Яхья in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, KG Kyrgyzstan, Yakhya in FR France and Яг’я in UA Ukraine.

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●

to live; will live. A prophet; the biblical John

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of Muslim Names

Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Yahya is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
TR Türkiye#287345,931346K rec.——Yahya79
SY Syria#5547,80852K rec.——Yahya39
MA Morocco#9115,40116K rec.——Yahya102
RU Russia—9,6748K rec.—#597Яхья102
SA Saudi Arabia#1188,3094.4K rec.——Yahya138
EG Egypt#6037,8325.6K rec.—listedYahya103
IQ Iraq—6,0506.6K rec.——Yahya42
ES Spain—4,754△1.7K rec.1 in 11K4.8KYahya59
US United States—3,97812K rec.1 in 84K4KYahya215
TN Tunisia#1053,5131.3K rec.—2.6KYahya39
FR France—2,715△155 rec.1 in 25K2.7KYakhya45
YE Yemen#1492,5982.9K rec.——Yahya62

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

Languages●

  • Turkish347K56%
  • Arabic97K16%
  • French27K4%
  • English24K4%
  • Indonesian18K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Turkish346,92356%
Arabic97,30716%
French27,0194%
English24,4334%
Indonesian18,0953%

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◐

Yahya is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Indonesian given name180K records spelled Yahya24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Türkiye

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Yahya', 'Yahya, Yàhyà, Ÿãhyã, Ýahýà

  • English given name64K records spelled Yahya68 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Nigeria, Tunisia

    Languages: English, German, Western Frisian

    Also written Yàhyà, Yah-Ya, Y'Ahya, Yahyae, Ýähýá

  • French given name40K records spelled Yahya57 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, Morocco, Belgium

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Yàhyà, Yàhya, Yâhyâ, Yàhyã, Yahyâ

  • Spanish given name21K records spelled Yahya50 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Argentina, Türkiye

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Yàhyà, Yaḥyā, Ýähya, Ýähýä, Ýãhýä

  • Hindi given name14K records spelled Yahya16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, Türkiye, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Marathi

    Also written Yaḥyá, Yaḥyā, Ýàhýá, Ýãhÿå, Ÿahyá

  • a separate given name6.7K records spelled Yahya12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Morocco, Ethiopia

    Also written Yaḥyá, Yaḥyā, Yaḥyà, Yähya, Yaḥyâ

  • Danish given name3.0K records spelled Yahya8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Denmark, Türkiye, Syria

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish

    Also written Yâhyâ, Yãhyã

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.

Other recorded senses●

Yahya 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, a Prophet, the biblical John, son of Prophet

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

  • Swahili/Arabic: God's gift; also Arabic form of John the Baptist, meaning living.

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • In Arabic, Arabic form of John; the Qur'anic prophet Yahya.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In Arabic, he lives; Qur'anic name of John the Baptist

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In Arabic, Yahya; John the Baptist, Qur'anic prophet.

    as a nameAfrican Muslim 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●

01020301920194019601980200028 · 1994

Show as table
Yahya in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1918–2014
Yearrecords
19181
19272
19301
19311
19331
19361
19371
19383
19394
19412
19422
19431
19441
19452
19462
19473
19481
19494
19505
19525
19532
19557
19562
19575
19583
19596
19605
19616
19626
19631
19649
19655
19668
19678
196810
196913
197013
197115
197218
197310
197417
19758
197613
19778
197811
19794
19806
19817
198216
198320
198415
19856
198612
198710
198812
198919
199018
199119
199215
199318
199428
199523
199614
199713
19988
20081
20101
20113
20142

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 69 years between 1918–2014. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

500100015002000Yahya of Antioch, b. 980Mohammad Abu Zakariya Yahya, b. 1203Al-Nawawi, b. 1233Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din, b. 1869Yahya Sinwar, b. 1962Yahya Jammeh, b. 1965Yahya Ayyash, b. 1966Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, b. 1986Yahya Al-Shehri, b. 1990Yahia Attiyat Allah, b. 1995

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 92 sources across 49 countries.

Official registers attesting Yahya
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—4.8K#915
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204K#4,579
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—3.6K#502
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20242.7K#254
TN TunisiaINS Tunisia — Les prénoms des nouveau-nés les plus populaires (2022)20222.6K#3
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202K#14,165
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.7K#1,155
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#22,989
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.1K#1,592
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020967—
GB United KingdomONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024)2024583#93
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000577#36,572

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 · 586 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Yahya?
We estimate roughly 14 thousand people bear Yahya (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Yahya have the most bearers?
Yahya is most frequently recorded in Türkiye, where it is most often spelled yahya.
How common is Yahya compared with other names?
In Türkiye, Yahya is the 287th most common given name of 294,597 given names recorded there.
Is Yahya a male or female name?
Yahya 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 Yahya mean?
Recorded meaning: to live; will live. A prophet; the biblical John
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/yahya

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, “Yahya” — the 287th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Yahya parses inside a full name →