Shankar

given name · Hindi · Latin script

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

Shankar is a given name, most frequently recorded in India, where it is the 9th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and Assamese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Hindu name based on Sanskrit Sankara ‘bringer of happiness or prosperity’.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 376◐
  • MYMalaysia1 in 17K
  • AUAustralia1 in 59K

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

≈1.7K ●

across 7 countries

#273 ●

of 16M given names

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
269 ●

2.8M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 13K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

ShankarLatin · Hindi●5.5M records
শঙ্করBengali · Bangla●3.5K records
ชานิการThai · Thai●5 records
ᲨანკარGeorgian · Georgian●1 records
СанкараCyrillic · Serbian●0 records
శంకరTelugu · Telugu●0 records

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Sankara in BF Burkina Faso, FR France, CI Côte d’Ivoire and 2 more.

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 based on Sanskrit Sankara ‘bringer of happiness or prosperity’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Shankar is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#98,652,6912.7M rec.—1.1MShankar257
MY Malaysia—3,7913.4K rec.——Shankar41
GB United Kingdom—2,3552.5K rec.—listedShankar86
PK Pakistan—2,15277 rec.——Shankar27
AU Australia—1,9753.8K rec.—1Shankar99
US United States—1,35042K rec.1 in 246K3.3KShankar269
BD Bangladesh#937790455 rec.——Shankar40
CA Canada—6901.5K rec.—5Shankar65
ID Indonesia—447718 rec.——Shankar33
NP Nepal—4351.3K rec.—4Shankar61
SG Singapore—327561 rec.——Shankar30
DE Germany—314537 rec.—1Shankar56

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

Languages●

  • Hindi5.5M58%
  • Assamese2.4M25%
  • 1.1M11%
  • English161K2%
  • Vietnamese116K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi5,546,95558%
Assamese2,390,94725%
1,053,43111%
English160,5862%
Vietnamese116,3661%

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◐

Shankar is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name13K records spelled Shankar6 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Shâñkar, Shãñkår

  • Polish given name4.0K records spelled Shankar32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Poland, United States, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Croatian

    Also written Sankar, Шанкар, Shanker, Санкар, Šhàñkåř

  • French given name2.2K records spelled Shankar3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, France, United States, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Śhankar

  • a separate given name1.0K records spelled Shankar2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Šhäńkâŕ

  • Malayalam surname384 records spelled Shankar28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Singapore, United States

    Languages: Malayalam, Tamil

    Also written Sanker, Shanker, பிரபு, சங்கர், Sangar

44 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●

Shankar is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Sanskrit: ‘conferrer of welfare’, a euphemistic epithet of the god Rudra (Shiva). It is the name of one of the most famous Hindu philosophers (8th—9th century AD). Shanta Sanskrit: ‘calmed’, referring especially to spiritual calmness acquired through yoga or meditation.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, Ravi, Indian sitar player

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, A male given name from Sanskrit used commonly in India.

    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●

05K10K15K19001920194019601980200012K · 1983

Show as table
Shankar in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
18998
19003
19071
19081
19091
19101
19114
19121
19136
19146
19154
191619
191720
191834
191955
1920160
192175
192294
1923177
1924149
1925111
1926174
1927178
1928224
1929374
1930245
1931424
1932524
1933523
1934722
1935687
1936871
19371,013
1938963
19391,367
19401,406
19411,891
19421,992
19431,979
19442,600
19452,462
19463,206
19473,381
19483,052
19493,347
19504,028
19514,954
19524,998
19534,249
19545,425
19555,649
19567,082
19577,021
19587,017
19598,957
19607,480
19619,508
196210,163
19639,597
196410,207
196510,132
196611,330
196711,409
196810,029
196910,855
197011,150
197111,696
197211,818
197311,328
197410,386
197510,094
197610,506
19779,447
19789,830
197910,252
19807,503
198111,260
198211,892
198311,963
198410,535
198510,428
19867,888
198710,485
19888,658
19899,023
19909,030
19919,132
19929,411
19939,422
19948,577
19956,779
19964,435
19974,730
19983,136
1999326
200019
200122
20027
20033
200716
20081,834
200913
2010883
2011484
2012327
2013231
20142,386
2015360
20165
20172

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 110 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●

500100015002000Adi Shankara, b. 788Shankar Dayal Sharma, b. 1918Shankar Lakshman, b. 1933Shankar Ghosh, b. 1935Shankar Vedantam, b. 1950Shankar Nag, b. 1954S. Shankar, b. 1963Shankar Balasubramanian, b. 1966Shankar Mahadevan, b. 1967Yuvan Shankar Raja, b. 1979

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 51 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Shankar
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaThis page discusses the most common names in India based on an analysis of election and census data, published by Housen—1.1M#8
IN IndiaThe article discusses common first and last names in India, published by Nimish V Adani on Medium.—1.1M#4
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—109K#37
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—18K#668
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—14K#100
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.3K#9,545
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.1K#14,111
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.4K#10,021
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.3K#19,629
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—117#7,640
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—109#4,941
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—78#5,130

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 given-name 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 · 311 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Shankar?
We estimate roughly 1.7 thousand people bear Shankar (counting its spellings and scripts) across 7 countries in our records.
In which country does Shankar have the most bearers?
Shankar is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled shankar.
How common is Shankar compared with other names?
In India, Shankar is the 9th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Shankar a male or female name?
Shankar is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Shankar mean?
Recorded meaning: Hindu name based on Sanskrit Sankara ‘bringer of happiness or prosperity’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shankar

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, “Shankar” — the 9th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Shankar parses inside a full name →