Syed
About 6,043 American babies have been named Syed since 1965, most of them around 2000. In 2025 it ranked 1,217th. About 5,900 Syeds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Syed boys named Syed
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,043
- Estimated living today
- 5,900
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2000
- Best rank
- 753rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,217th
- First recorded
- 1965
- Girls / boys
- 11 / 6,032
How old the living Syeds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,043 babies given the name since 1965, about 5,900 are alive — 98 in every hundred. Roughly 2,500 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Syeds
- Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898)Indian Muslim reformer and social activist
- Syed Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979)South Asian Islamic scholar, Founder of Jamaat-e-Islami
- Syed Nazrul Islam (1925–1975)Bangladeshi politician
- Syed Kamall (born 1967)British politician
- Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928)Indian Muslim jurist
- Syed Kirmani (born 1949)Indian cricketer
- Syed Ali Shah Geelani (1929–2021)Kashmiri Politician, separatist leader
- Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (1884–1953)19th century Islamic scholar of Pakistan
People named Syed with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Syed is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Syed is most concentrated in New York (3.6×), Illinois (3.5×), Virginia (2.5×), New Jersey (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2000
The most popular boys’ names the year Syed peaked:
Syed elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Syed | 9,439 | 142nd |
| Norway boys | Syed | 554 | 299th |
| Scotland boys | Syed | 251 | 268th |
| Ireland boys | Syed | 171 | 336th |
| France boys | Syed | 85 | 2,761st |
| England and Wales girls | Syed | 37 | 3,533rd |
| Switzerland boys | Syed | 24 | 1,145th |
| Belgium boys | Syed | 22 | 1,114th |
| Poland boys | Syed | 13 birth registrations | 435th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Syed: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Syed | 16 | 0.001% | 1,036th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Syed | 8 | 0.002% | 618th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Syed by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 8 | 360th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Syed among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Syed | 84 | 88 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Syed against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.