Muthu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: nice; gentle
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/muθu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Muthu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 11K
- USUnited States1 in 1.7M
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 172 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nice; gentle
Sources 1
- The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
Where in the world(measured from records)
Muthu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 264K | — | Muthu | 4 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Muthu | 52 |
| SG Singapore | #268 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Muthu | 42 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #796 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Muthu | 28 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Muthu | 2 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 237K | — | Muthu | 9 |
| US United States | — | 200 | 1 in 1.7M | 358 | Muthu | 165 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Muthu 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 Malay, strength
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)
- V. Muthub. 1901INIndian politician
- Sathyavani Muthub. 1923INIndian politician and an influential dalit leader
- Leo Muthub. 1952INIndian philanthropist (1952–2015)
- Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthub. 1980scientist
- Michael MuthuINIndian director, writer and actor
- Karunā MuthuNZNational Party candidate in 2023 New Zealand general election
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)
Attested in 20 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 170 | #38,422 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 30 | #38,422 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Muthu mean, and where does it come from?
- nice; gentle Recorded by The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys.
- How do you pronounce Muthu?
- A machine transcription gives /muθu/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Muthu a male or female name?
- Muthu 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.
- In which country does Muthu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.3 thousand people named Muthu in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled muthu.
- How common is the name Muthu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 200 people named Muthu in 2020, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.
- How common is Muthu compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Muthu is the 268th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Muthu?
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/muthuThe 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, “Muthu” — the 268th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.