Dar

loc · Swahili · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Dar is a name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Swahili and Arabic, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: probably from an Old High German stem for ‘spear’; possibly related to Dör- and dark/secret forms.

rarermore common
  • TZTanzania1 in 790
  • USUnited States1 in 5.4K
  • PKPakistan1 in 24K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈98K

across 16 countries

3

recorded for this name

Sources
131

96K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 654

Croatia

Spellings & scripts

DarLatin · Swahili36K records
দূরBengali · Bangla108 records
దొరTelugu · Telugu2 records

5 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Dra in US United States, IN India, ES Spain and 3 more, Daar in PK Pakistan and দূর in BD Bangladesh.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

probably from an Old High German stem for ‘spear’; possibly related to Dör- and dark/secret forms

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Dar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States61,4324.5K rec.1 in 5.4K61KDra131
IN India43,73986K rec.27KDra108
TZ Tanzania35,6971 rec.Dar4
EC Ecuador10,1035 rec.1 in 1.7K10K6
BR Brazil10,0040 rec.1 in 21K13K1
HR Croatia6,4661 in 6548.7K
CR Costa Rica2,2131 in 2.3K2.2K
PK Pakistan2,070763 rec.7Daar82
FR France2,0701 rec.1 in 33K2.1K1
ES Spain1,707121 rec.1 in 29K3.9KDra18
CZ Czechia1,1281 in 9.5K1.1K
SE Sweden663436 rec.1 in 15K66312

Roughly 61K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 5.4K). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • Swahili36K2%
  • Arabic9.5K1%
  • Hindi7331%
  • English4941%
  • French3021%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Swahili35,7032%
Arabic9,4551%
Hindi7331%
English4941%
French3021%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Dar is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname29K records spelled Dar23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Daer, Dar', Där, D'Ar, D'Aer

  • a separate name9.7K records spelled Dar4 spellings in the group

    Also written Dār, Ḏar, Ḍār

  • Arabic surname8.1K records spelled Dar49 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia

    Also written Dâr, Dàr, Dãr, Där, Ďàŕ

  • Spanish name7.1K records spelled Dar11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Costa Rica

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Dãr, Ďăř, Dąř, Dâr, Dàr

  • Malay name3.5K records spelled Dar6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia

    Also written Ďåř, Dâř, Dãr, Dâr

  • a separate name2.8K records spelled Dar28 spellings in the group

    Also written Dãř, Dãr, Dař, Däř, Ďăř

  • French surname2.3K records spelled Dar3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Morocco

    Also written D'Ar

57 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Dar is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Arabic, Arabic: "haven of peace"; also a Hebrew name meaning "mother of pearl".

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • mother of pearl.

    as a nameAfrican Names

  • In Kurdish, Tree

    as a wordkurdi.sh Kurdish personal names dictionary

  • In Portuguese, to give

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In Swedish, contraction of dagar, indefinite plural of dag; sometimes written da'r

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time

010020030020202025

Show as table
Dar in SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891), Norway, 2019–2025
Yearrecords
2019204
2020209
2021213
2022221
2023227
2024239
2025240

NO SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)7 years between 2019–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

19201940196019802000Munir Dar, b. 1935Ilan Dar, b. 1937Ishaq Dar, b. 1950Aleem Dar, b. 1968Aditya Dhar, b. 1983KSHMR, b. 1988Angira Dhar, b. 1988Noam Dar, b. 1993Leema Dhar, b. 1993
  • Munir Darb. 1935PKPakistani field hockey player (1935–2011)
  • Ilan Darb. 1937ILIsraeli actor
  • Ishaq Darb. 1950PKDeputy Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
  • Aleem Darb. 1968PKPakistani cricketer and cricket umpire
  • Aditya Dharb. 1983INnot in their usual nameIndian director
  • KSHMRb. 1988USnot in their usual nameAmerican DJ, record producer and songwriter
  • Angira Dharb. 1988INnot in their usual nameIndian actress
  • Noam Darb. 1993ILIsraeli-Scottish professional wrestler
  • Leema Dharb. 1993INnot in their usual nameIndian author
  • Anuj DharINnot in their usual nameIndian activist, journalist

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence

Attested in 43 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Dar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.5K#17,821
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#23,397
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000647#33,292
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)480#2,897
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020413#14,516
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020399#14,516
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls352#2,657
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls332#12,427
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025240
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2024239
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2023227
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)225#33,362

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 218 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dar?
We estimate roughly 98 thousand people bear Dar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 16 countries in our records.
In which country does Dar have the most bearers?
We estimate about 61 thousand people bear Dar in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled dra.
Where is Dar most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dar is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 654 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What does the name Dar mean?
Recorded meaning: probably from an Old High German stem for ‘spear’; possibly related to Dör- and dark/secret forms
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dar

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Dar”. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dar parses inside a full name →