Singh
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sɪŋ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Singh is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname.
- GYGuyana1 in 39(measured from records)
- INIndia1 in 95
- BHBahrain≈1 in 113
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 Singh 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)
- #7 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 543 (measured from records)
- 1 in 39 (inferred from the name graph)
13,918,756 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Zhong in CN China.
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 a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Singh, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Singh 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 | #3 | 13,918,756 | 1 in 95 | 14M | Singh | 425 |
| CN China | #620 | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Zhong | 167 |
| ID Indonesia | #790 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Singh | 140 |
| US United States | #148 | 116,749 | 1 in 2.8K | 164K | Singh | 543 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #3 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 136 | — | Singh | 169 |
| GY Guyana | #1 | 19,357 | 1 in 39 | 19K | Singh | 43 |
| KW Kuwait | #8 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 207 | — | Singh | 47 |
| BH Bahrain | #4 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 113 | — | Singh | 44 |
13,918,756 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)
Singh is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Hindi/Punjabi surname meaning "lion".
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In Filipino, an Indian Filipino surname from Sanskrit, common among Sikhs and Punjabis
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A surname from Punjabi.
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)
- Guru Gobind Singhb. 1666INtenth Sikh guru (1661–1708)
- Charan Singhb. 1902INPrime Minister of India (1979-1980)
- Zail Singhb. 1916INPresident of India from 1982 to 1987
- Vishwanath Pratap Singhb. 1931INPrime Minister of India (1989-1990)
- Manmohan Singhb. 1932INIndian economist, bureaucrat, academician and politician
- Milkha Singhb. 1935INIndian track and field athlete (1935–2021)
- Rajnath Singhb. 1951INIndian politician
- Neetu Singhb. 1958INIndian actress
- Jagmeet Singhb. 1979CACanadian politician, leader of the New Democratic Party
- Lilly Singhb. 1988CACanadian YouTube personality, vlogger and comedian
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 82 sources across 45 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 14M | #1 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 164K | #156 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 117K | #260 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 73K | #396 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 19K | #2 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Singh mean, and where does it come from?
- from a Sikh and Rajput male personal name derived from Sanskrit literally ‘lion’, hence ‘great person, hero’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Singh?
- A machine transcription gives /sɪŋ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Singh have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 14 million people named Singh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled singh.
- Where is Singh most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Singh is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 39 people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Singh?
- In India, the national register counted 13,918,756 people named Singh, about 1 in 95 residents.
- How common is Singh compared with other names?
- In India, Singh is the 3rd most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Singh?
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/singhThe 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, “Singh” — the 3rd most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.