Sultan
Masculine · Aramaic roots · “authority”
Sultan is the Arabic word for authority and rulership, a title that ran from Baghdad to Istanbul to Delhi before it was ever a given name. It reads the same in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu and Malay, so it needs no translation as it crosses borders. In American mouths it lands two ways — the flat English noun, SULL-tən, or the fuller sool-TAHN — and both are heard.
How old is the name Sultan?
Sultan first appears in US birth records in 1966 — 59 years ago. The typical Sultan is a kid of about 9 — this name's wave is very recent. About 2,400 people named Sultan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Sultan most popular?
Sultan peaked in 2025, reaching #1241 nationally. Today it ranks #1241, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Sultan appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From šulṭānā (Aramaic, 'dominion') to Sultan
The story of Sultan
The word came into Arabic long before it became a crown: sulṭān meant abstract authority, and only in the eleventh century, with the Seljuk rulers, did it harden into a formal title for a sovereign. From there it spread with Islamic rule — the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul, the sultanates of Delhi, Oman, Malacca and Zanzibar — and traveled into Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Swahili, Malay and eventually English, which borrowed it in the Middle Ages. Its use as a personal name is strongest in the Arabian peninsula, Pakistan and Central Asia, where it is given to boys, often paired with a second name. Its recent appearance in American records tracks families arriving from those regions, which is why it clusters in the biggest immigrant gateways.
Meaning
authority, power, rulership
From Arabic sulṭān, a noun built on the root s-l-ṭ meaning to have power over. The word entered Arabic from Aramaic šulṭānā, 'dominion', and appears in the Quran in the sense of authority or proof before it ever became a ruler's title.
How the name formed
- šulṭānāAramaic, 'dominion'
- sulṭānArabic
- SultanOttoman Turkish
- Sultan
Related forms: سلطان · Sultan · سلطان · Sultan / Sultanbek · Soltan · Sultana
Pronouncing Sultan
sool-TAHN
That is the Arabic and Turkish stress, on the second syllable. Many English speakers will default to SULL-tən, matching the English noun. Either is understood, and families usually pick one and correct gently.
Nicknames for Sultan
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1966
- Most boys named
- 2025161 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1241reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +5.9%161 in 2025, from 152
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Sultan in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- سلطان in Arabic — same name
- Sultan in Turkish — same name
- سلطان in Urdu — same name
- Sultan / Sultanbek in Kazakh — related form
- Soltan in Azerbaijani — spelling variant
- Sultana in Arabic (feminine) — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, New York, Texas.
Sultans among us
people named Sultan are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 10,609 born in 2025 was named Sultan
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Karsten test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Sultan's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Karsten climbed just as high around 2001, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Karsten's path sketches the road Sultan is walking now.
Sultan sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Sultan is headed
Sultan should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Sultan beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Sultan in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the same way in Arabic, Turkish, Urdu and Malay transliteration, so it crosses borders without a second version.
- Already an English word, which means almost no one will need the spelling repeated.
- A documented record stretching back to medieval Arabic, with the title in continuous use for roughly a thousand years.
- Distinctive in an American classroom — a child with this name is unlikely to share it with anyone.
- It is a title as well as a name, and an English word besides. Expect the occasional joke about royalty, and expect some people to read it as a rank before they read it as a person.
- In Turkey, Sultan is overwhelmingly a woman's name — a legacy of its use for Ottoman royal women. In the US it is recorded for boys, but a Turkish speaker may assume otherwise.
- The two pronunciations sit far apart, so the family version and the school version can drift. Deciding early which one you will hold to saves a lot of small corrections.
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Sultan
Masculine · Aramaic roots · #1241 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Sultans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,400 people named Sultan are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Sultan in 2025?
- Sultan ranks #1241 among US boy names in 2025, with 161 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Sultan?
- About 1 in every 10,609 US boys born in 2025 was named Sultan — 161 in all.
- Will my child share the name Sultan with classmates?
- Sultan will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Sultan
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Mazi#1241 · Ammar#1241 · Oakland#1244 · Ravi#1244 · Rian#1244 · Jet#1244 · Cory#1244 · Cedar#1244
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Sultan? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Sultan and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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