Sultan
It came into Polish through Latin, from a title an Arabic and later Turkish ruler carried: sovereign over land and subjects. Most Poles have never met one, and the few who bear it split across boys and girls, rare for a name that means "the one who governs".
Sultan Pronunciation
Sultan is pronounced SOOL-tahn (/ˈsultan/).
What Sultan means
Where Sultan comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
The name Sultan reached Polish through Latin, where medieval scribes wrote it sultanus. The word itself belonged first to Arabic and then to Turkish, where a sultan ruled as sovereign over land and subjects. The short meaning has stayed close to that office: ruler, one who governs.
In Poland the name still points east. On an official form at the urząd it appears far less often than Jan or Adam, and it usually marks a family with Arabic or Turkish roots. Poles have known the plain word for centuries, since old chronicles wrote of the Turkish sultan on the Bosphorus, the ruler with whom the Commonwealth fought one year and bargained for peace the next.
Sultan comes with no soft diminutives and no cross-gender variants. The name arrives whole. A boy who carries it holds a title that once belonged to men who signed treaties and minted their own coin. The two syllables keep their weight of command. It means władca.
How many people are named Sultan
1 in 132585 men in Poland is named Sultan. 190 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2298 among male names.
Sultan's popularity over time
2 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1834 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2024.
Sultan as a middle name
Sultan is a first name for 190 men in Poland and a middle name for another 37, an 84/16 split. In the women's middle-name ranking it sits 1148th, between Sheila (37) and Sun (37).
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#1146 Selma37
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#1147 Sheila37
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#1148 Sultan37
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#1149 Sun37
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#1150 Alba36