Saleh

At the 2020 census, 15,083 Americans bore the surname Saleh — 2,356th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 19,800.

By the numbers

People: 15,083
Rank: 2,356th
How common: 1 in 19,800
Per 100,000: 5.1

Where the name comes from

Origin Arabic

From fa-ira صالح or directly from Arabic صَالِح.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Saleh described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 78.6%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 8.1%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 5.1%
Black, not Hispanic 4.8%
Hispanic or Latino 3.1%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Saleh

Ali Abdullah Saleh (1947–2017)President of North Yemen (1978–1990) and Yemen
Amrullah Saleh (born 1972)First Vice President of Afghanistan from 2020 to 2021
Abd al-Qadir ibn Saleh (1941–2021)Algerian politician
Tarik Saleh (born 1972)Swedish director of Egyptian origin
Hamzah Saleh (born 1967)Saudi Arabian footballer
Tewfik Saleh (1927–2013)Egyptian film director
Yussuf Saleh (born 1984)Ethiopian footballers
Maryam Saleh (born 1985)Egyptian singer, songwriter and actress

People named Saleh with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Saleh

Also a first name

Saleh has been given to 1,783 American babies as a first name since 1974, peaking in 2018. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.