Kapil
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: probably meaning ‘monkey-coloured’ or ‘reddish brown’; the name of an ancient Hindu sage
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: Guyana, 2025
Kapil is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia≈1 in 2.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- GYGuyana1 in 17K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 56Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kapil itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 270 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈490,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
India, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kapila in LK Sri Lanka.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Sanskrit: probably meaning ‘monkey-coloured’ or ‘reddish brown’; the name of an ancient Hindu sage.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kapil counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #447 | ≈490,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 2.2K | Kapil | 270 |
| LK Sri Lanka | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Kapila | 20 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 124K | — | Kapil | 16 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 78K | — | Kapil | 30 |
| US United States | — | 1,375 | 1 in 242K | 1.4K | Kapil | 269 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Kapil | 19 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Kapil | 29 |
| GY Guyana | — | 45 | 1 in 17K | 45 | — | — |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Kapil 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.
name of a god; sage
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
In Estonian, adessive singular of kapp
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In tsg, infidel; unbeliever
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In slm, infidel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ckv, scar
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.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Kapil Deva Dvivedib. 1919INIndian academic
- Kapil Muni Tiwaryb. 1932INIndian linguist
- Kapil Kapoorb. 1940INIndian philosopher
- Kapil Sibalb. 1948INIndian lawyer and politician
- Kapil Devb. 1959INIndian cricketer
- Kapil Dev Aggarwalb. 1966INMos(Independent Charge) in U.P Government
- Kapil Sharmab. 1979INIndian actor and writer
- Kapil Mishrab. 1980INIndian politician and Former MLA
- Kapil Jhaverib. 1980BHIndian entrepreneur, motivational speaker and actor
- Kapil Sharmab. 1981INIndian actor, comedian, TV host and singer
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)39 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kapil mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: probably meaning ‘monkey-coloured’ or ‘reddish brown’; the name of an ancient Hindu sage. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What are other forms of the name Kapil?
- In the etymology graph, Kapila is a form of the same name in other languages.
- Is Kapil a male or female name?
- Kapil is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: India (India Names Dataset) and United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- In which country does Kapil have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 495 thousand people named Kapil in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kapil.
- How common is the name Kapil?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,375 people named Kapil in 2020, about 1 in 242 thousand residents.
- How common is Kapil compared with other names?
- In India, Kapil is the 447th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kapil?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kapilThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Kapil” — the 447th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.