Singh

surname · Hindi · Latin script

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

Singh is a surname, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’.

rarermore common
  • GYGuyana1 in 39◐
  • TTTrinidad & Tobago1 in 51
  • INIndia1 in 95

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

≈14M ●

across 10 countries

#14 ●

of 21M surnames

8 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
500 ●

24M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 39 ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

SinghLatin · Hindi●54M records
সিংহBengali · Bangla●16K records
СингхCyrillic · Russian●6.3K records
ซังThai · Thai●691 records
סינגHebrew · Hebrew●389 records
ΣινγκGreek · Greek●4 records
సింహTelugu · Telugu●1 records
ସଂହOdia · Odia●0 records

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled ซึง in KR South Korea, Singha in BD Bangladesh, สิงห์ in TH Thailand and Сингх in RU Russia.

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●

from a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’

Sources 1

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

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Singh is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#313,918,75622M rec.1 in 9514MSingh390
GB United Kingdom#42256,934114K rec.—listedSingh245
MY Malaysia#15141,757148K rec.——Singh148
AU Australia#29124,582155K rec.—1Singh275
US United States#160116,7491.3M rec.1 in 2.8K164KSingh500
CA Canada#16106,538112K rec.—1Singh231
BD Bangladesh#26073,4792K rec.——Singha59
TT Trinidad & Tobago#228,534649 rec.——Singh52
AE United Arab Emirates#427,58124K rec.——Singh157
ZA South Africa#5227,15626K rec.——Singh119
ES Spain#26026,81342K rec.1 in 1.9K27KSingh114
DE Germany#31623,65724K rec.—1Singh190

Roughly 14M people in India bear this name (about 1 in 95). 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●

  • Hindi54M51%
  • 45M43%
  • English1.9M2%
  • Bangla757K1%
  • Indonesian645K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi53,729,43051%
44,562,75143%
English1,900,0652%
Bangla756,8511%
Indonesian645,1351%

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◐

Singh is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname46M records spelled Singh5 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Singh', Sing-H, Siṅgh

  • Hindi surname86K records spelled Singh52 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Telugu, Swahili

    Also written Sing, Sanga, Singa, Singi, Sidhu

  • Polish surname33K records spelled Singh9 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Sïñgh, Şingh, Śíňğh, Sîñgh, Šińģh

  • Danish surname26K records spelled Singh19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Denmark, Norway, United States

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Norwegian Bokmål

    Also written Sïñgh, Siñgh, Sîngh, Šīñgh, Śiňğh

84 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●

Singh 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.

  • Hindi/Punjabi surname meaning "lion".

    as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames

  • In Filipino, an Indian Filipino surname from Sanskrit, common among Sikhs and Punjabis

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

  • In English, A surname from Punjabi.

    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●

01K2K3K1900192019401960198020002.6K · 1980

Show as table
Singh in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1899–2017
Yearrecords
18992
19081
19151
191819
19194
192010
19216
192211
192314
192423
192520
192616
192729
192830
192944
193050
193152
193256
193358
193482
193594
193688
1937107
1938138
1939154
1940178
1941187
1942257
1943246
1944275
1945277
1946312
1947364
1948398
1949425
1950482
1951464
1952541
1953553
1954592
1955839
1956597
1957761
1958991
1959903
19601,024
1961929
19621,183
19631,064
19641,271
19651,653
19661,157
19671,403
19681,703
19691,495
19702,127
19711,625
19722,132
19731,940
19742,163
19752,397
19762,142
19771,967
19782,357
19792,173
19802,554
19812,317
19822,504
19832,085
19842,180
19852,091
19862,250
19872,199
19882,125
19892,143
19902,097
19912,039
19921,878
19932,185
19941,934
19951,599
19961,038
1997923
1998377
19998
200842
200912
201047
2011177
2012130
2013442
2014177
2015387
20161
20176

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 95 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●

16001700180019002000Guru Gobind Singh, b. 1666Charan Singh, b. 1902Zail Singh, b. 1916Vishwanath Pratap Singh, b. 1931Manmohan Singh, b. 1932Milkha Singh, b. 1935Rajnath Singh, b. 1951Neetu Singh, b. 1958Jagmeet Singh, b. 1979Lilly Singh, b. 1988

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 78 sources across 43 countries.

Official registers attesting Singh
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—14M#1
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020164K#156
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010117K#260
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200073K#396
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—27K#193
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—27K#193
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 2025202519K#2
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—5.1K#94
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—4.2K#204
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20263.6K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—3.6K#617
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—3.5K#289

Reference works 5

  • 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)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 414 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Singh?
We estimate roughly 14 million people bear Singh (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Singh have the most bearers?
We estimate about 14 million people bear Singh in India, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled singh.
Where is Singh most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Singh is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 39 people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
How common is Singh compared with other names?
In India, Singh is the 3rd most common surname of 2,352,292 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Singh mean?
Recorded meaning: from a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/singh

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, “Singh” — the 3rd most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Singh parses inside a full name →