Radu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Slavic radu 'eager, willing'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/radu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Radu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Romania than in any other country, where it is the 41st most common given name.
- RORomania≈1 in 213(inferred from the name graph)
- ITItaly≈1 in 13K
- MDMoldova1 in 443
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.
- Romania (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 248 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 213 (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Romania, 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)
from Slavic radu 'eager, willing'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Radu 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RO Romania | #41 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 213 | — | Radu | 171 |
| CN China | — | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 166K | — | Radu | 8 |
| MD Moldova | #96 | 7,601 | 1 in 443 | 7.6K | Radu | 60 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 1 | Radu | 83 |
| FR France | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 54K | 27 | Radu | 4 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 804 | Radu | 47 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 11 | — | — |
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: e-services.md — living population register; ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Statbel — Noms de famille (family names); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)
Radu 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.
Romanian: short form of the various male names of Slavonic origin containing the element rad glad (cf. e.g. RADZIMIERZ and RADOS AW ).
as a word
In Latvian, first-person singular past indicative of rast
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, genitive singular of rad ("radium")
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Czech, accusative singular of rada
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Estonian, partitive plural of rada
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)
- Radu cel Frumosb. 1438ROSon of Vlad II Dracul
- Radu Mihneab. 1586TRlord of Wallachia
- Radu Vasileb. 1942RO57th Prime Minister of Romania (1998-1999)
- Radu Lupub. 1945RORomanian pianist (1945–2022)
- Radu Mihăileanub. 1958RORomanian-French film director and screenwriter (born 1958)
- Radu, Prince Consort of Romaniab. 1960RORomanian Royal
- Radu Munteanb. 1971RORomanian film director and screenwriter
- Radu Niculescub. 1975RORomanian footballer (born 1975)
- Radu Judeb. 1977RORomanian film director
- Radu Dragusinb. 2002RORomanian association football player (born 2002)
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 55 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 7.6K | #131 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2022 | 11 | #1,811 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 1 | #20,764 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2022 | 1 | #3,111 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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 Radu mean, and where does it come from?
- from Slavic radu 'eager, willing' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How common is the name Radu?
- In Moldova, the national register counted 7,601 people named Radu, about 1 in 443 residents.
- How common is Radu compared with other names?
- In Romania, Radu is the 41st most common given name of 34,167 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Radu?
- A machine transcription gives /radu/ (IPA) for Romanian.
- Is Radu a male or female name?
- Radu 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 Radu?
- In the etymology graph, Radek, Radovan and Rade are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Radu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 100 thousand people named Radu in Romania, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled radu.
What do you want to know about Radu?
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/raduThe 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, “Radu” — the 41st most common given name in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.