Sinai (surname)
Sinai is a surname. It is a Portuguese-style spelling of the Konkani surname Shenoy or Shannai. This spelling originated from Goa on the West Coast of India.[1] It is also an Arabic and Hebrew surname and masculine given name derived from Mount Sinai.[2] In the United States, the 2010 Census found 367 people with the surname Sinai, making it the 55,841st-most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 277 people (66,676th-most common) in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, about eight-tenths of the bearers of this surname identified as white, one-tenth as Hispanic, and three percent as Asian.[3] The Sinai families in India belong to the Brahmin caste.
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People
Notable people with this surname include:
- Narana Sinai Coissoró (born 1933), Portuguese politician of Goan origin
- Yakov Sinai (born 1935), Russian mathematician
- Khosrow Sinai (1941–2020), Iranian film director
- Allen Sinai (fl. 1961–present), American economist
- Moshe Sinai (born 1961), Israeli footballer
- Avraham Sinai (born Ibrahim Yassin, 1962), Lebanese-born Hezbollah member who converted to Judaism
- Nick Sinai (born 1970s), American government official and venture capitalist
Fictional characters
Fictional characters with this surname include:
- Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children
References
- Saradesāya, Manohararāya (2000). A History of Konkani Literature from 1500 to 1992. Pune: Sahitya Akademi. p. 24. ISBN 8172016646. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
- Hanks, Patrick (8 May 2003). Dictionary of American Family Names. Vol. 2. United States: Oxford University Press. p. 354. ISBN 0195081374. Retrieved 14 August 2019.
- "How common is your last name?". Newsday. Retrieved 5 September 2018.