Anwar
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Clear’, ‘bright’. As‘ad 3 ‘Happy’, ‘fortunate’, ‘lucky’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈænwɑɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Anwar is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country, where it is the 29th most common given name.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 642(inferred from the name graph)
- KWKuwait≈1 in 676
- SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 1.3K
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.
- Bangladesh (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 327 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 642 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bangladesh, 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)
‘Clear’, ‘bright’. As‘ad 3 ‘Happy’, ‘fortunate’, ‘lucky’. Ashraf $ ‘Honourable’, ‘distinguished’. ‘Asim ¢ ‘Protector’, ‘guardian’. Asma’ © ‘Prestige’; name of a woman who helped Muhammad and her father, Abu-
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Anwar is read(measured from records)
Anwar is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Hindi24%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Anwar in Hindi.
- Urdu13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Anwar in Urdu.
- English8.8%
pers. name (A. Sadat)
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Arabic, 'brighter; more luminous'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Arabic8.7%
more bright; more brilliant; more radiant; more luminous
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
rays of light; plural of Noor
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
- Indonesian7.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Anwar in Indonesian.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Anwar 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BD Bangladesh | #29 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 642 | listed | Anwar | 114 |
| PK Pakistan | #70 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Anwar | 136 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #62 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Anwar | 124 |
| MA Morocco | #222 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Anwar | 65 |
| EG Egypt | #753 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Anwar | 142 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #74 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Anwar | 122 |
| US United States | — | 4,874 | 1 in 68K | 4.2K | Anwar | 327 |
| KW Kuwait | #52 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 676 | — | Anwar | 97 |
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. 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)
Anwar is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
‘Clear’, ‘bright’. As‘ad 3 ‘Happy’, ‘fortunate’, ‘lucky’. Ashraf $ ‘Honourable’, ‘distinguished’. ‘Asim ¢ ‘Protector’, ‘guardian’. Asma’ © ‘Prestige’; name of a woman who helped Muhammad and her father, Abu-
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Shiny
as a nameThe book of African 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)
- Anwar Wagdib. 1904EGEgyptian actor (1904–1955)
- Anwar Sadatb. 1918EGPresident of Egypt from 1970 to 1981
- Anwar Ahmed Khanb. 1933PKPakistani field hockey player
- Anwar Ibrahimb. 1947MYPrime Minister of Malaysia since 2022
- Mohamed Hadihb. 1948USnot in their usual namePalestinian-American real estate developer
- Anwar Mohammed Gargashb. 1959AEEmirati politician and Minister of State of Foreign Affairs
- Anwar al-Awlaqib. 1971USAmerican-Yemeni imam and suspected Islamist extremist (1971–2011)
- Mira Awadb. 1975ILnot in their usual nameArab-Israeli singer and actress of paternal Palestinian descent
- Anwar El Ghazib. 1995NLDutch association football player
- Anwar Hadidb. 1999USAmerican model
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 84 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.2K | #3,992 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 635 | #3,992 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 38 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 6 | — |
Reference works 7
- 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
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Anwar mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘Clear’, ‘bright’. As‘ad 3 ‘Happy’, ‘fortunate’, ‘lucky’.
- Where does the name Anwar come from?
- ‘Clear’, ‘bright’. As‘ad 3 ‘Happy’, ‘fortunate’, ‘lucky’. Ashraf $ ‘Honourable’, ‘distinguished’. ‘Asim ¢ ‘Protector’, ‘guardian’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Anwar a male or female name?
- Anwar 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 Anwar?
- In the etymology graph, Enver is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Anwar?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈænwɑɹ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Anwar have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 253 thousand people named Anwar in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled anwar.
- How common is the name Anwar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,874 people named Anwar in 2020, about 1 in 68 thousand residents.
- How common is Anwar compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Anwar is the 29th most common given name of 29,323 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Anwar?
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/anwarThe 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, “Anwar” — the 29th most common given name in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.