Surya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘sun’, the name of the sun god in his physical form, ruler of the sky, said to be the father of the twins Yama and Yami, primal man and woman
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sʊɹajə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Surya is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country. In Sri Lanka it is the 39th most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 120K(measured from records)
- LKSri Lanka≈1 in 858as Sarath
- QAQatar≈1 in 1.6Kas Suraj
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 Surya 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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- #570 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 293 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈130,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Indonesia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
14 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Suraj in US United States, NG Nigeria, QA Qatar and 3 more, สุรัตน์ in TH Thailand and Sarath in LK Sri Lanka.
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: ‘sun’, the name of the sun god in his physical form, ruler of the sky, said to be the father of the twins Yama and Yami, primal man and woman.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Surya 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Suraj | 51 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈80,000 est. | ≈1 in 378 | 1 | Suraj | 85 |
| TH Thailand | #145 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | #629,517 | สุรัตน์ | 127 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #39 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 858 | — | Sarath | 61 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Suraj | 42 |
| US United States | — | 2,767 | 1 in 120K | 7.4K | Suraj | 285 |
| QA Qatar | #126 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Suraj | 29 |
| GY Guyana | #200 | 355as Suraj | 1 in 2.1K | 355 | Suraj | 4 |
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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; 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)
Surya 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.
In English, Sanskrit, 'sun'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
born in lunar month Leo
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
In English, The chief solar deity, one of the Adityas, son of Kasyapa and one of his wives Aditi, of Indra, or of Dyaus Pita (depending by the versions). Portrayed with golden arms and hair, Surya drives through the heaven in his triumphal chariot harnessed by seven horses or one horse with seven heads, which represent the seven colours of the rainbow or the seven chakras.
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)
- Surya Senb. 1894BDBritish Indian Bengali revolutionary (1894-1934)
- Surya Bikram Gyawalib. 1898NPNepali historian (1898-1985)
- Surya Subedib. 1958NPBarrister & professor
- Surya Bonalyb. 1973FRFrench figure skater
- Surya Gangulib. 1977INacademic
- Mouly Suryab. 1980IDIndonesian filmmaker
- Suryakumar Yadavb. 1990INnot in their usual nameIndian cricketer
- Made Deya Surya Saraswatib. 1998IDbadminton player
- Emanuel Joseph Surya Hartonob. 2000IDbadminton player
- Surya Charishma Tamirib. 2006INbadminton player
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 65 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2K | #5,953 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 793 | #5,953 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 47 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 6 | — |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1 | #593 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
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
- How do you pronounce Surya?
- A machine transcription gives /sʊɹajə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Surya mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘sun’, the name of the sun god in his physical form, ruler of the sky, said to be the father of the twins Yama and Yami, primal man and woman. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Surya a male or female name?
- Surya 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 Surya have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 134 thousand people named Surya in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled suraj.
- How common is the name Surya?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,767 people named Surya in 2020, about 1 in 120 thousand residents.
- How common is Surya compared with other names?
- In Sri Lanka, Surya is the 39th most common given name of 14,062 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Surya?
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/suryaThe 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, “Surya” — the 39th most common given name in Sri Lanka. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.