Shiva

given name · Hindi · Latin script

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

Shiva is a given name, most frequently recorded in India, where it is the 40th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 502◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 2.8K
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates1 in 3.8K

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

≈41K ●

across 10 countries

#501 ●

of 16M given names

7 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
257 ●

2.2M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 345 ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

ShivLatin · Hindi●3.3M records
ศิวะThai · Thai●2.7K records
শিবBengali · Bangla●439 records
శివTelugu · Telugu●42 records
ሲቡEthiopic · Amharic●3 records
시브Hangul · Korean●2 records
ᲨივაGeorgian · Georgian●1 records

6 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Shiv in IN India, BR Brazil, NO Norway and 6 more, Siva in MY Malaysia, SG Singapore, AE United Arab Emirates and 4 more, ศิวะ in TH Thailand and Shibu 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●

Sanskrit: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra. Shiva is one of the most important of the Hindu gods, associated in particular with asceticism, generative power, and the dance of cosmic destruction.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Shiva is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#405,929,9692.1M rec.—195KShiv239
SE Sweden—29,590△220 rec.1 in 34530KShiva19
MY Malaysia#5549,37311K rec.——Siva64
NO Norway—6,999△128 rec.1 in 78118KShiv11
TH Thailand—6,7703.8K rec.—#174,733ศิวะ69
GB United Kingdom—6,1844.8K rec.—listedShiv93
AU Australia—5,2606.3K rec.—1Shiva103
SG Singapore#1743,8045.6K rec.——Siva64
CA Canada—2,9363.2K rec.—5Shiv69
SA Saudi Arabia#4732,507512 rec.—listedShiv23
US United States—2,20460K rec.1 in 151K2.2KShiva257
AE United Arab Emirates#1871,9592K rec.——Siva60

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

Languages●

  • Hindi463K48%
  • English143K15%
  • Telugu111K12%
  • Assamese111K12%
  • 69K7%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi462,51848%
English142,69415%
Telugu110,70512%
Assamese110,70012%
68,9507%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name80K records spelled Shiva2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Shīvā

  • Indonesian given name6.0K records spelled Shiva3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Indonesia, United States, Malaysia

    Also written 'Shiva, Shiva'

  • Spanish given name4.9K records spelled Shiva3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Spain, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Šhìvä

  • French given name1.8K records spelled Shiva5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, India, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Shivà, Shivá, Shivã

  • Danish given name730 records spelled Shiva7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, India, United States

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian

    Also written Shïvâ, Shîvã, Shìvâ, Shïvã

53 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●

Shiva 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.

  • In English, A weeklong period of formal mourning for a close relative.

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

  • In Portuguese, alternative spelling of Xiva

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

  • In Finnish, Shiva (Hindu deity)

    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●

05001K1.5K2K1900192019401960198020001.9K · 1993

Show as table
Shiva in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2015
Yearrecords
18991
19131
19161
19171
19182
19191
19203
19215
19225
192320
19245
19254
19266
19276
19289
19296
19306
193114
193212
193313
193415
193515
193624
193720
193814
193920
194027
194135
194234
194326
194433
194542
194668
194757
194852
194946
195054
195157
195288
195364
195484
195596
1956108
1957100
1958109
1959113
1960109
1961131
1962157
1963127
1964130
1965159
1966170
1967177
1968197
1969193
1970203
1971202
1972216
1973234
1974185
1975221
1976277
1977222
1978247
1979293
1980256
1981298
1982377
1983467
1984479
1985552
1986522
1987683
1988629
1989827
1990959
19911,185
19921,700
19931,912
19941,773
19951,786
1996937
19971,034
1998810
199934
20001
20021
200824
201036
20119
201212
20135
201456
201544

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 95 years between 1899–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Shiva Nath Katju, b. 1910Shivmangal Singh Suman, b. 1915Shiva Kumar Rai, b. 1919Shiva Naipaul, b. 1945Shiva Rajkumar, b. 1961Shiva Regmi, b. 1965Shiva Rose, b. 1969Cosma Shiva Hagen, b. 1981Shiva Negar, b. 1992Shiva Tafari Nagasawa, b. 2001

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 58 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Shiva
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.7K#5,665
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.3K#5,665
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.2K#4,780
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—288#4,043
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020247#82,347
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—222#4,460
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020170—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010163#108,734
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—122#7,166
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000101#149,328
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—73#1,985
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—67#6,568

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 409 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Shiva?
We estimate roughly 41 thousand people bear Shiva (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Shiva have the most bearers?
Shiva is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled shiv.
Where is Shiva most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shiva is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 345 people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
How common is Shiva compared with other names?
In India, Shiva is the 40th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Shiva a male or female name?
Shiva 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 Shiva mean?
Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shiva

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, “Shiva” — the 40th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Shiva parses inside a full name →