The Solomon surname comes from the Hebrew given name Shelomo, built on the root shalom, “peace”, and carried by the biblical king famed for his wisdom. It belongs to no single people. Jewish, English, Welsh, Black American, Ethiopian and Indian Christian families all bear it.
What Does the Surname Solomon Mean?
Solomon means “peace” or “peaceable”, from the Hebrew personal name Shelomo (שְׁלֹמֹה), formed on the Semitic root sh-l-m, meaning whole, sound, complete. It is the same root that gives Hebrew shalom and Arabic salaam.
The English spelling arrived by a long road: Hebrew Shelomo into Greek, then Latin, with the King James Bible of 1611 fixing the form for English readers. Across continental Europe the older Sal- forms held on, which is why Salomon remains standard in France, Germany and Scandinavia.
Like almost every surname built from a personal name, Solomon is patronymic in function. It began as a way of saying whose son you were, and only later hardened into something a family passed down.
Where the Solomon Name Comes From
There is no one homeland. Solomon is a biblical name that four separate populations adopted independently, for four different reasons, and the shared spelling hides four unrelated family histories.
The Jewish line
Shelomo has been a common Jewish given name for as long as there have been records of Jewish given names. Among Sephardi families it was already functioning as a hereditary family name in Iberia and around the Mediterranean well before northern Europe required such things, and the Salomon spelling is often the Sephardi one.
Among Ashkenazi Jews the shift from patronymic to fixed surname came late and came by order. The Habsburg edict of 1787, the French decree of 1808 and the Prussian law of 1812 each compelled Jewish families to register a permanent family name, and many simply froze the father’s given name in place. A man known as Yaakov ben Shlomo became Jacob Solomon, and his children stayed Solomon. The same machinery is described in more detail on our page for the Cohen surname.
One wrinkle: the 1808 French decree barred new registrants from choosing names out of the Hebrew Bible, so where Salomon survived in France it did so because it was already in use.
The English and Welsh line
Medieval Christians used the name too, and used it freely. Solomon was a byword for wisdom, so Salomon appears in English records from the twelfth century onward as a given name and then as a surname, entirely independent of any Jewish bearing.
Wales had its own vernacular form, Selyf, descended from Old Welsh Seleu, borne by early Welsh kings and saints. Selyf was displaced by the imported Solomon after the Welsh Bible of 1588, but the older layer explains why the name has a genuine Welsh history rather than an imported one.
The Ethiopian, Middle Eastern and Indian Christian line
Ethiopia is where Solomon is most common in the world, with roughly 672,000 bearers, about one person in 145, against 84,000 in Eritrea. The reason is partly the Kebra Nagast tradition tracing the Ethiopian imperial line to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and partly a naming custom: Ethiopians and Eritreans use patronymics rather than inherited surnames, so a father’s given name becomes a fixed surname only at emigration, when a foreign registry demands one.
The same name is common among Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi Christians, and among Indian Christian families in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, where Solomon serves as both given name and family name.
Spelling Variants and Related Names
The main variants are Salomon (French, German, Scandinavian, often Sephardi), Salomone (Italian), Salomons and Solomons (Dutch and Anglo-Jewish), Soloman, Shlomo and Shlomi (modern Hebrew), Zalman and Salman (Yiddish), Soghomon (Armenian) and Salomão (Portuguese).
The Arabic cognate is Sulayman, anglicised Suleiman or Suliman, from the same figure, who appears in the Qur’an as a prophet. It is the same name but not the same family tree: Suleiman households in America carry it from the Levant, Anatolia and North Africa rather than from Europe.
Two cautions. Solomons with a final s is a distinct Anglo-Jewish surname in its own right, not a misspelling, and it recorded 309 American bearers in 2010. And the Italian surname Sollazzo, which looks like it belongs in this family, does not: it derives from Italian sollazzo, “solace, amusement”, from Latin solacium, and is a nickname surname with no connection to the biblical name at all.
Haym Salomon, the Polish-born broker who helped fund the American Revolution, is the best-known American bearer of the Sal- spelling, and a reminder that Solomon and Salomon households in one city were often the same family spelled two ways.
The Solomons in America
American Solomons arrived in at least four distinct movements, and the 2010 Census figures make the mixture visible. Of the 46,534 Americans with the name, 57.83 per cent self-identified as white and 32.11 per cent as Black, roughly 14,900 people, with a further 3.15 per cent Hispanic and 3.13 per cent Asian or Pacific Islander.
The earliest arrivals were Jewish traders in colonial America, scattered from Newport and Philadelphia to the fur posts of the Great Lakes. The great wave came with the central and eastern European migration of 1880 to 1924, which built the Jewish neighbourhoods where Solomon households still cluster: Forest Hills in Queens, Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh and their many successors.
The Black American Solomons have a separate and specific history. After emancipation, freedpeople choosing a surname for the first time frequently reached for the Bible, and Solomon, Moses, Abraham and Isaac all show the pattern. This was a different act from adopting a common English surname such as Williams or Jones. A biblical name was a declaration rather than a convenience, taken from the one book that had been read aloud in slavery and that supplied its own vocabulary of deliverance.
Those families concentrated first across the coastal South, including the Gullah Geechee country of the South Carolina Lowcountry, then went north and west with the Great Migration into Harlem and Bronzeville in Chicago.
The newest Solomons are East African. Ethiopian and Eritrean families arriving from the 1980s registered patronymics as surnames on entry, which is why the name turns up densely in communities such as Little Ethiopia in Washington DC. Indian Christian and Middle Eastern Christian Solomons have arrived alongside them.
The practical consequence is simple. You cannot assume anything about a Solomon family from the surname alone. The paperwork has to tell you.
Notable People Named Solomon
Ezekiel Solomon (c. 1735 to 1808) was a Prussian-born fur trader at Fort Michilimackinac, generally described as the first Jewish settler in what became Michigan.
Hannah Greenebaum Solomon (1858 to 1942), a Chicago clubwoman, founded the National Council of Jewish Women in 1893 and spent her life organising settlement work for Jewish immigrants.
Freddie Solomon (1953 to 2012) played eleven NFL seasons as a wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers, winning two Super Bowls with the 49ers.
Susan Solomon (born 1956) is the American atmospheric chemist whose Antarctic fieldwork established the link between chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone hole. She holds the National Medal of Science.
Andrew Solomon (born 1963) is a writer and psychology professor whose The Noonday Demon won the National Book Award and whose Far from the Tree won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Prabhu Solomon (born 1969) is an Indian film director working chiefly in Tamil cinema, and a well-known bearer of the name in its South Indian Christian form.
How Common Is Solomon Today?
Solomon was the 745th most common surname in the United States at the 2010 Census, held by 46,534 people. Worldwide it is far more common than that suggests, with over a million bearers, most of them in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nigeria.
| US rank (2010 Census) | #745 |
|---|---|
| Americans with the name | 46,534 |
| Origin | Jewish, English and Welsh, Black American, Ethiopian and Indian Christian |
| Meaning | From Hebrew Shelomo, “peace” |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the surname Solomon mean?
It means “peace” or “peaceable”, from the Hebrew given name Shelomo, built on the root sh-l-m, “whole, complete”, the same root behind shalom. The name reached English through Greek and Latin and was fixed in its modern spelling by the King James Bible.
Is Solomon a Jewish surname?
Sometimes, and only sometimes. It is a genuine and long-established Jewish surname, but it is also an English and Welsh Christian surname, a very common Black American surname, and the most common surname in Ethiopia. In the 2010 US Census 32.11 per cent of American Solomons self-identified as Black. Never assume the origin from the name alone.
Where does the Solomon family come from?
There is no single Solomon family and no single homeland. The name arose independently in Jewish communities across Europe and the Mediterranean, in medieval England and Wales, among freedpeople in the American South, and in Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Levant and Christian South India.
How common is the surname Solomon?
It ranked 745th in the United States in 2010, with 46,534 bearers. Globally it is far more prominent: Ethiopia alone has roughly 672,000, about one person in every 145.
Is there a Solomon family crest or coat of arms?
No. In every European heraldic tradition arms are granted to an individual and pass to direct descendants, never to everyone sharing a surname. Because Solomon was adopted separately by unrelated families on three continents, the idea is doubly meaningless here. Anyone selling a Solomon crest is selling a decoration, not a lineage.
Are Solomon and Suleiman the same name?
They are the same biblical name in two languages. Arabic Sulayman, anglicised Suleiman or Suliman, comes from the same Hebrew original, and Solomon appears in the Qur’an as the prophet Sulayman. Sharing the name does not mean sharing a family: the two forms travelled through entirely different communities.
If your family carries the Solomon name, its route to America is traceable, but only once you know which Solomon you are. Atlas of Home can follow the paperwork back from wherever your family landed, whether that road began in a Polish shtetl, a Welsh parish, a Carolina plantation or the Ethiopian highlands.
Further reading: Wikipedia on the name Solomon and the Jewish Women’s Archive entry for Hannah Greenebaum Solomon.