Names of Palestine PS

Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS) records ليان as the commonest given name in Palestine; the names that most distinguish Palestine from the rest of the world are مريم, فلسطين and غزل.

Written in Arabic.

Population
4.8M
Official registers
6
Name forms recorded
7.7K
BBuilt from 6 official registers (2011), 7,733 name forms in our corpus, 6 cited works.

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

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Palestine are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Palestine included.

How names work in Palestine

Names in Palestine follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Palestine

Counts children born in the year · authority tier 2
Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS), 2011 — 170 given names counted over children born that year, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1ليان964—
2جنى885—
3ريماس801—
4حال771—
5لين720—
6رهف665112
7سارة544113
8بيسان516—
9غزل48413
10اية452—
11سديل431—
12مريم4232
13نور40769
14غنى402—
15تالة378—
16ملك375—
17ميار363—
18لجين344—
19زينة342—
20راما331—

Where the two lists disagree

24 of Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS) 2011Across all recordsمحمد: 1 → 31. محمد3أحمد: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. أحمدnot rankedيوسف: 3 → 21 · ranks lower across all records3. يوسف21عمر: 4 → 72 · ranks lower across all records4. عمر72محمود: 5 → 45 · ranks lower across all records5. محمود45عبد الرحمن: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. عبد الرحمنnot rankedأمير: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. أميرnot rankedآدم: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. آدمnot rankedعلي: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. عليnot rankedإبراهيم: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. إبراهيمnot rankedيامن: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. يامنnot rankedعبد اهلل: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. عبد اهللnot rankedأيهم: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. أيهمnot rankedعمرو: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. عمروnot rankedكريم: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. كريمnot rankedيزن: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. يزنnot rankedمصطفى: 17 → 70 · ranks lower across all records17. مصطفى70قصي: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. قصيnot rankedمجد: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. مجدnot rankedيحيى: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. يحيىnot rankedليث: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. ليثnot rankedريان: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. ريانnot rankedحمزه: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. حمزهnot rankedقيس: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. قيسnot rankedزيد: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. زيدnot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS), 2011 on the left; every record we hold for Palestine on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Palestine

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Palestine 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.

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

Scripts & spelling

Names in Palestine are written in Arabic (93%) and Latin (7%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

أبوgiven name●
عبدgiven name●
مريمgiven name●
محمدgiven name●
إيمانgiven name●
The best-attested names in Palestine, 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

  • Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS)2011headline (given)

    Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Counts: newborns. given. 211 forms. 2011. Licence: Open government data.

    What we know about this register

    Top-100 simple + compound first names by sex from the civil register (West Bank 2011). 381 names (264 with counts; محمد 4,464 / ليان 964). Correction 2026-07-11 — the remaining 117 compound-name rows have count=NULL/evidence=attested by design, NOT a bidi/digit-parsing bug as previously assumed: PCBS's own PDF (book1948.pdf) prints a literal "--" for these and carries an explicit footnote confirming it means "count < 2, redacted for confidentiality" — the true count is genuinely unpublished, unrecoverable. What WAS recoverable and has now been backfilled: PCBS does disclose `rank` for these rows even though it withholds `count` (rank isn't privacy-sensitive) — all 117 rows now have rank filled in from the source table. Replaces junk ps-disc-* sources.

    Last verified 2026-07-02.

  • This report presents statistics on baby names registered in the West Bank in 2015, published by the Palestinian Central2015not a population count

    www.pcbs.gov.ps. Counts: not recorded. given. 5 forms. 2015. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This report presents statistics on baby names registered in the West Bank in 2015, published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • Heuristic parse of www.arcgis.comnot a population count

    www.arcgis.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 17 forms. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. Heuristic parse of www.arcgis.com

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • This page discusses the most common names in Israel according to data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, as2014not a population count

    anbaaonline.com. Counts: not recorded. given. 10 forms. 2014. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. This page discusses the most common names in Israel according to data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, as reported by Haaretz.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • The page lists the most popular names for newborns in Israel according to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics, published by2018not a population count

    paltoday.ps. Counts: not recorded. given. 9 forms. 2018. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. The page lists the most popular names for newborns in Israel according to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics, published by Palestine Today.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

  • The page discusses the most popular names among newborns in the occupied Palestinian territories, published by Arab Jour2023not a population count

    arab-j.net. Counts: not recorded. given. 4 forms. 2023. Licence: unknown.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-discovered via Firecrawl. The page discusses the most popular names among newborns in the occupied Palestinian territories, published by Arab Journal.

    Last verified 2026-05-11.

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

What is the most common given name in Palestine?
محمد, according to Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS) (2011), with 4,464 bearers recorded among boys.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Palestine?
Because they count different people. Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS) (2011) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is محمد. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is مريم. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Palestine”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/PS (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from Palestine — Birth Names in the West Bank 2011 (PCBS).