Sani

given name · Hindi · Latin script

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

Sani is a given name, most frequently recorded in India, where it is the 92nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: (Hin) personification of the planet Saturn.

rarermore common
  • YEYemen1 in 15◐
  • CZCzechia1 in 282
  • TRTürkiye1 in 416

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

≈258K ●

across 9 countries

#444 ●

of 16M given names

12 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
408 ●

4.5M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 250 ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

SoniLatin · Hindi●1.8M records
СанияCyrillic · Russian●144K records
선아Hangul · Korean●37K records
ᲡონაGeorgian · Georgian●2.6K records
สุนาThai · Thai●2.4K records
שאנהHebrew · Hebrew●371 records
ՍոնաArmenian · Armenian●228 records
সানBengali · Bangla●24 records
సనTelugu · Telugu●1 records
ΣοναGreek · Greek●1 records
ਸੁਨGurmukhi · Punjabi●1 records
සේනSinhala · Sinhala●0 records

20 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sana in FR France, PK Pakistan, ES Spain and 2 more, Shauna in US United States, CA Canada, AU Australia and 1 more, Jona in PH Philippines, FI Finland, BR Brazil and 1 more and Сания in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan.

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●

(Hin) personification of the planet Saturn

Sources 1

  • A Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Sani is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#924,416,5151.9M rec.—218KSoni273
TR Türkiye#321877,312953K rec.—#94Şen103
YE Yemen—267,173236 rec.——Sanaa14
RU Russia#243175,13157K rec.—#122Сания127
US United States#433164,680957K rec.1 in 2K165KShauna408
TH Thailand#119148,56785K rec.—#92,533สุนีย์128
NG Nigeria#39117,517129K rec.—listedSani76
GB United Kingdom#39870,08358K rec.—36Shona159
PK Pakistan#9159,5828.3K rec.—listedSana113
KR South Korea#20557,05229K rec.—1M선아146
PH Philippines#56839,36234K rec.—32KJona74
CZ Czechia#11137,906△2.7K rec.1 in 28238KSona95

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

Languages●

  • Hindi136K25%
  • English127K24%
  • Swahili73K13%
  • Indonesian50K9%
  • Arabic28K5%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi136,20125%
English127,34624%
Swahili72,69613%
Indonesian49,9519%
Arabic28,3325%

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◐

Sani is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name239K records spelled Sani28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, India, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Saeni, Şani, Sani', Sàni, Sàñī

  • Hindi given name190K records spelled Sani12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Malaysia

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Säni, S̲ānī, Šåņi, Sānī, Såñï

  • Arabic given name76K records spelled Sani7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Nigeria, Sweden, Ethiopia, Libya

    Languages: Arabic, Amharic

    Also written ሳኒ, Seni, ሰኒ, Saani, Šani

  • Portuguese given name27K records spelled Sani17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Nigeria, Peru, Paraguay

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Sañi, Şani, Sàñí, Saní, Sãñï

  • Hindi given name15K records spelled Sani24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Nigeria, Pakistan, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Sinhala

    Also written Shani, Shanì, Šhâñï, Šhăňï, Šhåñî

  • Hindi given name14K records spelled Sani156 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Lebanon, Nigeria

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written Sai, Sunny, Saï, সানি, Shai

64 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●

Sani 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, A Loloish language spoken in China.

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

  • In Arabic, brilliant, majestic, exalted, eminent, splendid. See Rafi‘ a3)

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

  • In Swahili, second; Hausa-Fulani name corresponding to Arabic ‘second’

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • In English, Tibetan; Sherpa; the kind-hearted one

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In Arabic, second

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

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●

01020304019201940196019802000202039 · 1994

Show as table
Sani in INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024), Ecuador, 1905–2024
Yearrecords
19051
19061
19071
19121
19131
19141
19153
19163
19183
19192
19203
19213
19227
19232
19242
19254
19261
19273
19283
19292
19303
19314
19323
19336
19341
19351
19367
19372
19385
19396
19406
19415
19428
19436
194410
19457
19466
194711
19485
19497
19506
19517
195210
19536
19547
195511
19566
19578
19584
195910
196012
19614
196210
196311
19647
196510
196619
196714
196816
196925
197014
197123
197222
197324
197423
197515
197622
197728
197815
197925
198023
198128
198223
198317
198427
198528
198626
198730
198820
198925
199024
199118
199225
199329
199439
199529
199624
199726
199831
199930
200024
200132
200225
200324
200428
200530
200634
200729
200824
200926
201035
201134
201228
201323
201425
201530
201633
201726
201818
201912
202016
202119
202215
202317
202415

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 115 years between 1905–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Sani Abacha, b. 1943Sani Yaya, b. 1963Sani Elhadj Magori, b. 1971Sani Musa Danja, b. 1973Sani Maikatanga, b. 1975Sani Bečirovič, b. 1981Sani Issoufou Mahamadou, 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 72 sources across 39 countries.

Official registers attesting Sani
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—2.4K#2,702
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—1K#9,103
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022749—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020747#32,900
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—645#10,115
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—530#2,107
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010529#41,164
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—506—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020413#15,961
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000377#51,809
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020300#15,961
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—188#12,842

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 682 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sani?
We estimate roughly 258 thousand people bear Sani (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Sani have the most bearers?
Sani is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled soni.
How common is Sani compared with other names?
In India, Sani is the 92nd most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Sani a male or female name?
Sani 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 Sani mean?
Recorded meaning: (Hin) personification of the planet Saturn
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sani

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, “Sani” — the 92nd most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sani parses inside a full name →