Names of Iraq IQ

The names that most distinguish Iraq from the rest of the world are محمد, علي and احمد; names here are written in Arabic.

Written in Arabic, Kurdish.

Population
39M
Official registers
4
Name forms recorded
48K
BBuilt from 4 official registers, 48,341 name forms in our corpus, 13 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

How names work in Iraq

2 naming traditions are in use in Iraq, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Iraq

Characteristic of Iraq

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Iraq holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

محمدعلياحمدحسينصلاحجاسمعبدحسنعباسزينبفاطمةحيدرصالحمصطفىزهراءعبداللهمريمابراهيممحمودقاسمحميدسعدايماننورمهديخالدعلاءشيماءعمركرارعبودسارةعزيزسجاديوسفرشيدصباحعدنانعبدالكريماسراءمحسنرقيةهدىعمارياسينعادلموسىمرتضىجوادحوراءهاديبشرىسيفوساممهندرعدليلىانتصارعمادامل
Sized by how much of the difference between Iraq's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Scripts & spelling

Names in Iraq are written in Arabic (97%) and Latin (3%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

بغدادsurname●
محمدgiven name●
عليgiven name●
احمدgiven name●
حسينgiven name●
The best-attested names in Iraq, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family namesnot a population count

    Wikidata / Wikimedia Foundation. Counts: notable people. given and surname. 770 forms. Licence: CC0.

    What we know about this register

    Given names + surnames among Wikidata persons with P27=Q796. Snapshot 2026-07-25. N given: 770, N surnames: 407. Extends the existing parse_wikidata_gap_countries.py pattern (AF, AO, CD, KP, MG, ML, MW, MZ, NE, NP, SD, UG) to this country. Unlike that script this captures the NATIVE-SCRIPT label as well, by grouping on the name item rather than its English label — `name` holds the ar form and `name_romanized` the English transliteration. Heavy notability bias — politicians, athletes, diaspora and historical figures are over-represented and the frequencies do NOT represent the living population; use as a low-confidence floor only. For Iraq it is nonetheless the only source of tribal nisba surnames, since the civil registry is purely patronymic. Built by scripts/parse_wikidata_pa_sy_iq_ye.py.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • This page lists the most popular baby names for 2024 published by Mama's and Papa's.2024not a population count

    ar.mamasandpapas.ae. Counts: not recorded. given. 30 forms. 2024. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page lists the most popular baby names for 2024 published by Mama's and Papa's. DEMOTED 2026-07-25: UAE baby-goods retailer blog listicle, not Iraqi national data, while carrying status=normalized. Real Iraqi data now comes from iq-civil-registry-names and iq-wikidata-citizens-2026.

    Last verified 2026-07-25.

  • A post discussing the most common names in Iraq, posted by المُغرد العراقي on Twitter.2018not a population count

    x.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 11 forms. 2018. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. A post discussing the most common names in Iraq, posted by المُغرد العراقي on Twitter.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • The page discusses the most popular baby names in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, published by almasra.iq.2023not a population count

    almasra.iq. Counts: not recorded. given. 2 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. Almasra.iq article about popular names in Sulaymaniyah city only; 4-row parquet has count=0 (rank-only: محمد, أحمد, نور, إيلا) — sub-city sample, not national Iraq data.

    Last verified 2026-05-12.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

Is there one naming system in Iraq?
No — 2 are described on this page (Kurdish, Arabic), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Iraq”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/IQ (data snapshot 2026-09-12).