Sunil

given name · Hindi · Latin script

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

Sunil is a given name, most frequently recorded in India, where it is the 17th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘very dark blue’; also said to denote the pomegranate tree or the flax plant.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 447◐
  • LKSri Lanka1 in 1.3K
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 20K

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

≈8.3K ●

across 8 countries

#319 ●

of 16M given names

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
333 ●

2.8M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.8K ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

SunilLatin · Hindi●6.6M records
সুনীলBengali · Bangla●3.3K records
สีนิลThai · Thai●1.3K records
ସୁନିଲOdia · Odia●45 records
సునలTelugu · Telugu●0 records
සනුලSinhala · Sinhala●0 records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Suneel in PK Pakistan, AU Australia, สีนิล in TH Thailand and Suneela in SE Sweden.

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: ‘very dark blue’; also said to denote the pomegranate tree or the flax plant.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Sunil is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#177,274,3212.7M rec.—3.4KSunil306
GB United Kingdom—10,3564.5K rec.—3Sunil142
US United States—7,00558K rec.1 in 47K7KSunil333
TH Thailand—3,0641.6K rec.—#669,869สีนิล67
MY Malaysia—2,9061.4K rec.——Sunil43
CA Canada—2,5822.4K rec.—1Sunil123
PK Pakistan—1,727377 rec.——Suneel50
ID Indonesia—1,2151K rec.—listedSunil66
FR France—1,203792 rec.—3Sunil106
LK Sri Lanka#991,1261.8K rec.——Sunil52
BD Bangladesh#867879346 rec.——Sunil36
NP Nepal—8562.2K rec.—5Sunil84

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

Languages●

  • Hindi6.6M80%
  • 926K11%
  • English167K2%
  • Bangla97K1%
  • Vietnamese80K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi6,637,26580%
926,36611%
English167,3722%
Bangla97,2461%
Vietnamese79,9571%

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◐

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

  • a separate given name979K records spelled Sunil3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Sun-Il

  • English given name198K records spelled Sunil25 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Norwegian

    Also written Sun-Il, Suñïl, Sùñîl, Sůnïĺ, Súñíl

  • Polish given name7.5K records spelled Sunil37 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Poland, United States, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Croatian

    Also written Сунил, Суніл, Suneel, Суниль, Суніль

  • Korean given name1.8K records spelled Sunil7 spellings in the group

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

    Also written 순일, Sun-Il, Soonyil, Soon Il, 수닐

  • a separate given name834 records spelled Sunil4 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Sûñîl, Súńíl, Sùníl

  • Greek given name742 records spelled Sunil3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Συνιλ, Σουνιλ

34 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●

Sunil is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, A male given name from Sanskrit.

    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●

020K40K60K80K19001950200064K · 1993

Show as table
Sunil in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1889–2017
Yearrecords
18891
18961
18972
189952
19007
19011
19031
19071
19091
19101
19113
19131
19141
19153
191615
191720
191836
191938
1920223
192165
192262
1923356
192493
192577
192619
192721
192831
192940
193019
193129
193245
193345
193448
193544
193666
193754
193881
193978
194086
194199
1942150
1943143
1944187
1945207
1946217
1947305
1948280
1949323
1950465
1951549
1952771
1953655
19541,139
19551,239
19561,615
19572,256
19582,486
19593,503
19603,646
19614,234
19626,157
19635,882
19647,679
19658,243
19669,774
196711,533
196812,159
196913,520
197016,146
197116,231
197220,496
197321,312
197425,121
197525,711
197630,778
197727,578
197829,528
197932,338
198028,523
198140,154
198250,700
198354,048
198459,896
198557,254
198648,285
198758,999
198855,869
198954,368
199055,846
199158,585
199261,777
199363,561
199454,825
199548,535
199625,370
199723,438
199815,961
1999990
200025
200130
200214
20032
20041
20053
20061
200737
20084,270
20097
20102,122
2011111
2012230
2013332
20149,100
20152,131
201612
201720

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 116 years between 1889–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Sunil Dutt, b. 1929Sunil Gangopadhyay, b. 1934Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, b. 1949Sunil Thapa, b. 1957Sunil Shetty, b. 1961Sunil Babu Pant, b. 1972Sunil Grover, b. 1977Sunil Amrith, b. 1979Sunil Chhetri, b. 1984H. S. Prannoy, b. 1992

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 50 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Sunil
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—331K#28
IN IndiaIndia Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive)—34K#165
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20207K#3,110
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—3.4K#2,080
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020538#43,268
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 20252025418#235
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026300#990
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—267#1,008
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010239#79,598
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—226#4,394
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—204#5,168
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—198#9,120

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 · 368 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sunil?
We estimate roughly 8.3 thousand people bear Sunil (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Sunil have the most bearers?
Sunil is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled sunil.
How common is Sunil compared with other names?
In India, Sunil is the 17th most common given name of 4,777,337 given names recorded there.
Is Sunil a male or female name?
Sunil 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 Sunil mean?
Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘very dark blue’; also said to denote the pomegranate tree or the flax plant.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sunil

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, “Sunil” — the 17th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sunil parses inside a full name →