Krishnan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu name from Sanskrit krsna ‘black’ (see Krishna) + the TamilMalayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɹɪʃnən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Krishnan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country. In the United Arab Emirates it is the 83rd most common surname.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 2.2K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 3.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 326 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈29,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Hindu name from Sanskrit krsna ‘black’ (see Krishna) + the TamilMalayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n. This is only a given name in India, but has come to be used as a family name in the U.S.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Krishnan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #128 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 461 | Krishnan | 121 |
| IN India | #793 | 8,598 | 1 in 154K | 8.6K | Krishnan | 272 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #83 | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Krishnan | 99 |
| US United States | — | 3,810 | 1 in 87K | 5.4K | Krishnan | 326 |
| AO Angola | #747 | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | — | Krishnan | 4 |
| SG Singapore | #190 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Krishnan | 92 |
| BH Bahrain | #91 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Krishnan | 17 |
| KW Kuwait | #178 | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Krishnan | 29 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ananda Krishnanb. 1938MYMalaysian businessman
- Thriyambakam Krishnanb. 19381938-
- Kannan Krishnanb. 1950USAmerican materials scientist
- Ramesh Krishnanb. 1961INIndian tennis player
- Armin Krishnanb. 1975scientist
- Yogendran Krishnanb. 1982MYMalaysian badminton player and coach
- Ganiel Krishnanb. 1994PHFilipino beauty queen contentor, actress and showbiz reporter
- Rahul Krishnanmusician
- Akhila KrishnanINIndian visual artist, director, and comics artist
- Shreyas KrishnanINIndian comics artist
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 37 sources across 20 countries.
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Krishnan mean, and where does it come from?
- Hindu name from Sanskrit krsna ‘black’ (see Krishna) + the TamilMalayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Krishnan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɹɪʃnən/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Krishnan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 29 thousand people named Krishnan in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled krishnan.
- How common is the name Krishnan?
- In India, the national register counted 8,598 people named Krishnan, about 1 in 154 thousand residents.
- How common is Krishnan compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Krishnan is the 128th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Krishnan?
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/krishnanThe 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, “Krishnan” — the 128th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.