Narayan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: literally ‘path of man’, i.e
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/nɑˈɹɑjɑn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Narayan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 48th most common given name.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 8.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 233K
- NPNepal≈1 in 583
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.
- Nepal (inferred from the name graph)
- #594 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 295 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 583 (inferred from the name graph)
≈52,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, 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)
Sanskrit: literally ‘path of man’, i.e. ‘son of man’; a byname of Brahma, god of creation, and of Vishnu.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Narayan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NP Nepal | — | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 583 | — | Narayan | 89 |
| BD Bangladesh | #589 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | — | Narayan | 49 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 132K | — | Narayan | 67 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 6.5K | — | Narayan | 32 |
| US United States | — | 1,425 | 1 in 233K | 3.2K | Narayan | 295 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Narayan | 3 |
| KW Kuwait | — | ≈470 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | — | Narayan | 6 |
| IN India | #48 | — | — | 30K | Narayan | 265 |
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; 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)
Narayan 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.
In English, Narbada [Narmada]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, river, India
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Sanskrit: the son of man
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
name of a god
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
Protector
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Narayan Hari Apteb. 1889INMarathi popular novelist & writer of advice books and editor from Maharashtra, India
- Narayan Shridhar Bendreb. 1910INIndian artist (1910-1992)
- Narayan Apteb. 1911INMurder Convicted, Indian entrepreneur and activist (1911–1949)
- Satya Narayan Goenkab. 1924MMBurmese teacher of vipassanā meditation (1924–2013)
- Narayan Desaib. 1924INIndian writer and activist
- Narayan Gangaram Surveb. 1926INMarathi poet from Maharashtra, India
- Narayan Singh Bhatib. 1930INwriter
- Narayan Khadkab. 1949NPNepalese politician
- Narayan Raneb. 1952INIndian politician
- Narayan Prakash Saudb. 1962NPMember of Parliament of Nepal
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 61 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | India Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive) | — | 7.4K | #740 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.4K | #9,663 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 28 | #9,663 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 7 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 5 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 4 | — |
| IN India | A Genealogist's Guide to Indian Names (Ellefson, 2002) | — | — | — |
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
- Where does the name Narayan come from?
- Sanskrit: literally ‘path of man’, i.e. ‘son of man’; a byname of Brahma, god of creation, and of Vishnu. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Narayan?
- A machine transcription gives /nɑˈɹɑjɑn/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Narayan mean?
- Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: literally ‘path of man’, i.e.
- Is Narayan a male or female name?
- Narayan 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 are other forms of the name Narayan?
- In the etymology graph, Narayana is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Narayan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 52 thousand people named Narayan in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled narayan.
- How common is the name Narayan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,425 people named Narayan in 2020, about 1 in 233 thousand residents.
- How common is Narayan compared with other names?
- In India, Narayan is the 48th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Narayan?
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/narayanThe 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, “Narayan” — the 48th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.