Rama
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: pleasing; alternative name for the Hindu god Vishnu
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɹɑmə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rama is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common surname.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 5.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NPNepal≈1 in 145as Ram
- INIndia1 in 396as Ram
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 Rama itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (measured from records)
- #122 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 348 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
3,352,858 named Ram
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ram in IN India, ES Spain, PK Pakistan and 5 more and Rom in PH Philippines.
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: pleasing; alternative name for the Hindu god Vishnu
Sources 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rama 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 | #20 | 3,352,858as Ram | 1 in 396 | 3.4M | Ram | 294 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 145 | — | Ram | 105 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈54,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | listed | Ram | 82 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | Rom | 78 |
| PK Pakistan | #517 | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 29K | listed | Ram | 42 |
| ES Spain | — | 4,635 | 1 in 11K | 4.6K | Ram | 47 |
| HR Croatia | — | 2,492as Car | 1 in 1.7K | 2.5K | Ram | 10 |
| FI Finland | — | 1,607 | 1 in 3.5K | 4.1K | Ram | 9 |
| GY Guyana | #52 | 1,121as Ram | 1 in 669 | 1.1K | Ram | 7 |
3,352,858 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); 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)
Rama 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.
Sanskrit: ‘pleasing’. Three famous bearers of the name are known: Parasurama ‘Rama of the axe’, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu; Balarama ‘the strong Rama’, elder brother of Krishna and eighth incarnation of Vishnu; and above all Ramachandra, seventh incarnation of Vishnu, whose story is told in the Ramayana. Ramakrishna $ Compound name from RAMA and KRISHNA.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
causing rest; enchanting; all pervading; omnipresent; pleasing; charming; lovely; pleasant; pleasure; joy; delight; dark.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
ramo de árvore; tree branch
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Swedish, Rama kan härstamma från flera olika språk. Som persiskt kvinnonamn betyder det ’lycklig; jublande’ och på sanskrit ’angenäm’. Som mansnamn är det ett av den hinduiske guden Vishnus namn med betydelsen ’vacker, behaglig’.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Rama DaSarathi (R); Rama Jamadagnya (R);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
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)
- Rama Chellappab. 1953USbiomedical data engineering researcher (1953-)
- Rama Sithanenb. 1954MUpolitician from Mauritius
- Rama Khokhab. 1957CAIndian Canadian medical biophysicist
- Rama Burshteinb. 1967USIsraeli film director and screenwriter
- Rama Yadeb. 1976SNSenegalese and French politician and the author
- Rama Thiawb. 1978SNdirector and filmmaker
- Rama Duwajib. 1997USAmerican artist, First Lady of New York City (born 1997)
- Rama Kumilgob. 1999Track and field athlete from Papua New Guinea
- Rama BijapurkarINIndian academic
- Rama BrewGHGhanaian actress and musician
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 91 sources across 43 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 146 | #11,619 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 121 | #6,015 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 94 | #3,045 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 76 | #3,700 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 34 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 24 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 18 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 16 | — |
Reference works 10
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Rama mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: pleasing; alternative name for the Hindu god Vishnu Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- How do you pronounce Rama?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹɑmə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Rama a male or female name?
- Rama 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 Rama have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 3.4 million people named Ram, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Rama most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Rama is densest in Finland — about 1 in 3.5 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Rama?
- In Spain, the national register counted 4,635 people named Rama, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Rama compared with other names?
- In India, Rama is the 20th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rama?
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/ramaThe 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, “Rama” — the 20th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.