Kumar

surname · Hindi · Latin script

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

Kumar is a surname, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the most common surname. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’.

rarermore common
  • LKSri Lanka1 in 98◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 421
  • MYMalaysia1 in 638

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

≈1.7M ●

across 13 countries

#7 ●

of 21M surnames

16 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
456 ●

43M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 798 ◐

India

Spellings & scripts●

KumarLatin · Hindi●78M records
কুমারBengali · Bangla●53K records
กุมารThai · Thai●2.3K records
КумарCyrillic · Kazakh●455 records
කුමාරSinhala · Sinhala●45 records
കുമാർMalayalam · Malayalam●36 records
કુમારGujarati · Gujarati●12 records
ᲙუმარGeorgian · Georgian●10 records
ਕੁਮਾਰGurmukhi · Punjabi●7 records
קומאריHebrew · Hebrew●5 records
କୁମାରOdia · Odia●1 records
쿠마리Hangul · Korean●1 records
కుమరTelugu · Telugu●0 records
ಕುಮಾರKannada · Kannada●0 records
குமாரTamil · Tamil●0 records
ΚουμαριGreek · Greek●0 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kumari in ES Spain, BR Brazil, PL Poland and 2 more and Kumara in LK Sri Lanka.

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●

Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’. It is also an epithet of the god Kartikeya, the son of Shiva. It commonly occurs as the final element of compound given names, and sometimes as a personal name in its own right.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family 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 Kumar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#11,661,64942M rec.1 in 7981.7MKumar387
GB United Kingdom#18890,63643K rec.—listedKumar214
MY Malaysia#3086,26669K rec.—634Kumar136
PK Pakistan#8661,8064.6K rec.——Kumar106
AU Australia#15942,28368K rec.—1Kumar233
US United States#62925,986496K rec.1 in 13K37KKumar456
BD Bangladesh#32424,11014K rec.—listedKumar118
SG Singapore#1122,91728K rec.——Kumar148
CA Canada#31217,37320K rec.—2Kumar189
ID Indonesia#39515,90219K rec.—listedKumar122
LK Sri Lanka#1114,41443K rec.——Kumara88
TH Thailand#7519,7976.8K rec.—#39,437Kumar124

Roughly 1.7M people in India bear this name (about 1 in 798). 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●

  • Hindi78M64%
  • 21M17%
  • Assamese15M12%
  • Bangla1.9M2%
  • English1.5M1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi78,010,92264%
20,638,58217%
Assamese15,041,30712%
Bangla1,850,5272%
English1,528,8231%

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◐

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

  • a separate surname22M records spelled Kumar5 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Kumar', 'Kumar, Kumâr, Kumār

  • Assamese surname15M records spelled Kumar5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Türkiye

    Languages: Assamese, Bangla

    Also written Komar, কুমাৰ

  • Arabic surname528K records spelled Kumar14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar

    Languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic

    Also written קומר, Komar, Comer, ኩማር, קומאר

  • Spanish surname322K records spelled Kumar30 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Kümâr, Kůmąr, Kumãr, Ķůmâř, Ķûmàř

  • Russian surname113K records spelled Kumar193 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Poland, Kazakhstan, United States

    Languages: Russian, Croatian, Polish

    Also written Кумар, Kûmãř, Kūmãř, Ķûmãř, Ḱuḿẫř

  • Burmese surname13K records spelled Kumar7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, United States

    Also written Kumãr, Kŭmář, Kûmâř, Kưmăř, Kűmář

  • Korean surname12K records spelled Kumar5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, South Korea, Malaysia

    Also written 쿠마르, Kumarš, Kumār, Kümáŕ

66 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●

Kumar 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.

  • Sanskrit: ‘boy’, ‘son’, or ‘prince’; a byname of the beautiful youth Skanda, son of Shiva. Feminine form: Kumari (‘daughter’, ‘princess’: an epithet of Shiva’s wife). 300 L

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In Hindi, either a variant spelling of Kumer or a variant of Humar, a topographic name for someone who lived on a hill, from holm (dialectally hum ‘hill’, ‘height’).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, ‘Child, son, prince’, from Sanskrit kumāra.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sanskrit. kumära »Junge; Sohn«).

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • l<USKO

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

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●

02.5K5K7.5K10K1900192019401960198020008.4K · 1993

Show as table
Kumar in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
18998
19111
19132
19141
19163
19173
19188
191913
192040
192117
192218
192354
192415
192523
19266
192715
192817
192936
193018
193126
193246
193340
193459
193549
193672
193792
193873
193989
194093
1941102
1942151
1943126
1944180
1945163
1946204
1947236
1948212
1949272
1950281
1951270
1952351
1953267
1954406
1955394
1956410
1957485
1958542
1959596
1960582
1961640
1962850
1963791
19641,040
19651,010
19661,071
19671,215
19681,346
19691,412
19701,622
19711,646
19721,932
19732,093
19742,382
19752,504
19762,866
19772,758
19783,027
19793,363
19802,315
19814,113
19825,047
19835,053
19845,247
19855,382
19863,852
19876,173
19885,764
19895,900
19906,391
19917,240
19927,918
19938,438
19947,074
19955,839
19963,834
19973,289
19982,225
1999487
20009
20017
20022
2008705
20095
2010388
201161
201242
2013111
20141,996
2015259
20161
20171

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 101 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●

19201940196019802000Dilip Kumar, b. 1922Rajendra Kumar, b. 1929Sri Chinmoy, b. 1931Meira Kumar, b. 1945Nitish Kumar, b. 1951Vijay Kumar, b. 1962Akshay Kumar, b. 1967Ajith Kumar, b. 1971Pooja Kumar, b. 1977Sushil Kumar, b. 1983

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 75 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Kumar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.7M#13
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202037K#917
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201026K#1,357
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200015K#2,293
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—3.1K#1,655
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—3.1K#1,654
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20262.6K#176
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.6K#6,207
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2.2K#1,001
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—1.9K#1,070
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20261.1K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—1.1K#2,672

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 · 426 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kumar?
We estimate roughly 1.7 million people bear Kumar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Kumar have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.7 million people bear Kumar in India, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled kumar.
How common is Kumar compared with other names?
In India, Kumar is the most common surname of 2,352,292 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Kumar mean?
Recorded meaning: Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kumar

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

See how Kumar parses inside a full name →