Dev

given name · Hindi · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Dev is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In India it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’.

rarermore common
  • NZNew Zealand1 in 835◐
  • CACanada1 in 922
  • AUAustralia1 in 1K

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

≈101K ●

across 11 countries

#15 ●

of 21M surnames

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
532 ●

48M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 4.1K ◐

Nepal

Spellings & scripts●

DeviLatin · Hindi●54M records
দেবBengali · Bangla●13K records
דביHebrew · Hebrew●4K records
ดูวาThai · Thai●268 records
ДэвиCyrillic · Russian●234 records
데비Hangul · Korean●2 records
දේවSinhala · Sinhala●1 records
ದೕವKannada · Kannada●0 records
దవTelugu · Telugu●0 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Debbie in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 19 more, Devi in IN India, ID Indonesia, MY Malaysia, Deb in BD Bangladesh and דבי in IL Israel.

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●

Sanskrit: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dev is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GB United Kingdom—198,690181K rec.—4Debbie254
AU Australia—113,61495K rec.—88Debbie214
CA Canada—90,18489K rec.—4Debbie203
IN India#284,23245M rec.1 in 16K84KDevi224
BD Bangladesh#26174,2607.3K rec.—listedDeb56
ID Indonesia#30127,39915K rec.—#12Devi192
PH Philippines—17,02716K rec.——Debbie103
IT Italy—15,49116K rec.—120Debbie52
MY Malaysia#42510,94433K rec.—354Devi65
DE Germany—10,72911K rec.—1Debbie96
NZ New Zealand—10,2198.6K rec.—13Debbie119
SG Singapore#3199,98811K rec.——Debbie90

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

Languages●

  • Hindi832K66%
  • 265K21%
  • English76K6%
  • Urdu18K1%
  • Bangla18K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi832,11366%
264,73021%
English76,4696%
Urdu18,1381%
Bangla17,9391%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name614K records spelled Dev2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Pakistan, United Kingdom

    Also written Dēv

  • English given name109K records spelled Dev19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Swedish

    Also written Dêv, Dév, Ďev, Dęv, Dëv

  • Punjabi surname9.2K records spelled Dev5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Deve, ਦੇਵ, Dove

  • Turkish given name5.1K records spelled Dev6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Türkiye, United Kingdom

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Dêv, Ďĕv, Dèv

  • Russian given name603 records spelled Dev9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kazakhstan, Russia, India, United States

    Languages: Russian, Kazakh, Ukrainian

    Also written Дев, Дэв

  • Croatian given name525 records spelled Dev11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Дев, Dèv, Dëv, Ďèv

  • Polish given name524 records spelled Dev2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, India, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Ďëv

45 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●

Dev 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 English, Clipping of developer.

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

  • In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (zu sanskrit. deva »Gott«, auch übliche Anrede für Könige und Prinzen, etwa »Majestät«, »Hoheit«).

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • Dodata

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • In French, synonym of développeur (“dev”)

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

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Domung.

    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●

01K2K3K1900192019401960198020002.8K · 1972

Show as table
Dev in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
18994
19001
19015
19021
19132
19142
19151
191610
19177
191822
191925
192043
192126
192266
192374
192471
192565
192668
1927109
1928118
1929168
1930119
1931195
1932290
1933285
1934312
1935396
1936399
1937517
1938550
1939550
1940669
1941660
1942890
1943788
1944898
1945952
19461,033
19471,321
1948909
1949886
19501,357
19511,397
19521,804
19531,186
19541,595
19551,671
19561,661
19572,089
19582,006
19592,455
19601,964
19612,010
19622,686
19632,315
19642,468
19652,391
19662,409
19672,762
19682,445
19692,334
19702,642
19712,436
19722,833
19732,605
19742,696
19752,414
19762,479
19772,250
19782,130
19792,026
19801,745
19812,014
19822,358
19832,218
19842,271
19852,189
19861,820
19872,282
19881,998
19891,902
19901,957
19912,055
19922,273
19932,396
19941,980
19951,818
19961,168
19971,110
1998806
199990
20004
20011
20022
20033
20061
200719
2008404
20098
2010140
2011198
2012109
201365
2014370
2015128
20162
201711

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 107 years between 1899–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Dev Kant Baruah, b. 1914Dev Anand, b. 1923Dev Kohli, b. 1942Dev, b. 1947Dev Gurung, b. 1954Dev Reeves, b. 1967Dev Patel, b. 1990Dev Vishnu, b. 2006Dev Ayyappan, b. 2006

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 60 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Dev
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—88K#67
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—65K#256
NP NepalNPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only20217.4K#84
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—5.7K#921
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.4K#5,044
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020905#28,086
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010529#41,164
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—319#25,081
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000223#79,394
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020129#5,044
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025126—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—89#9,261

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 · 427 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dev?
We estimate roughly 101 thousand people bear Dev (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Dev have the most bearers?
Dev is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled debbie.
How common is Dev compared with other names?
In India, Dev is the 2nd most common surname of 2,352,292 surnames recorded there.
Is Dev a male or female name?
Dev is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What does the name Dev mean?
Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dev

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, “Dev” — the 2nd most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dev parses inside a full name →