Chowdhury
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu and Muslim surname literally ‘leader of a community or caste’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈtʃaʊduɹi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chowdhury is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country, where it is the 11th most common surname.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 104(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 28K
- NPNepal≈1 in 80as Chaudhary
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 Chowdhury 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.
- Bangladesh (inferred from the name graph)
- #235 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 342 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 104 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Bangladesh, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Chaudhary in IN India, QA Qatar, AE United Arab Emirates and 1 more and Chaudhry in PK Pakistan.
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)Hindu and Muslim surname literally ‘leader of a community or caste’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Chowdhury 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 | #11 | ≈1,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 104 | 1.1K | Chowdhury | 192 |
| IN India | #40 | 878,401as Chaudhary | 1 in 1.5K | 878K | Chaudhary | 281 |
| NP Nepal | #900 | ≈380,000 est. | ≈1 in 80 | 3 | Chaudhary | 94 |
| PK Pakistan | #255 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 10 | Chaudhry | 119 |
| US United States | — | 11,961 | 1 in 28K | 19K | Chowdhury | 342 |
| QA Qatar | #15 | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 329 | — | Chaudhary | 34 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #30 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Chaudhary | 74 |
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; Bangladeshi name database containing surnames and first names categorized by gender and frequency.; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)Chowdhury is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A surname from Bengali.
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)- Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhuryb. 1863BDNawab of Dhanbari of Tangail in East Bengal (1863-1929) (r. 1911-1929)
- A. F. M. Ahsanuddin Chowdhuryb. 1915BDBengali statesman, public servant and judge (1915–2001)
- Abu Sayeed Chowdhuryb. 1921BDBangladeshi jurist and politician (1921–1987)
- Salil Chowdhuryb. 1925INIndian composer, poet and playwright (1925–1995)
- Badrul Haider Chowdhuryb. 1925BDChief Justice of Bangladesh
- Mizanur Rahman Chowdhuryb. 1928BDformer Prime Minister of Bangladesh (1928-2006)
- A. Q. M. Badruddoza Chowdhuryb. 1932BDPresident of Bangladesh from 2001 to 2002 (1930–2024)
- Salahuddin Quader Chowdhuryb. 1949BDBangladeshi politician
- Rita Chowdhuryb. 1960INIndian writer
- Shefali Chowdhuryb. 1988GBBritish actress
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)36 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 325K | #77 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 19K | #1,902 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #2,997 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.8K | #5,539 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 541 | #1,143 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 205 | #184 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 197 | #727 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 175 | #758 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 76 | #684 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 53 | #308 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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
- What does the name Chowdhury mean, and where does it come from?
- Hindu and Muslim surname literally ‘leader of a community or caste’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Chowdhury?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈtʃaʊduɹi/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Chowdhury have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 million people named Chowdhury in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chowdhury.
- How common is the name Chowdhury?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,961 people named Chowdhury in 2010, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Chowdhury compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Chowdhury is the 11th most common surname of 12,312 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chowdhury?
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/chowdhuryThe 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, “Chowdhury” — the 11th most common surname in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.