Dev
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Dev is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country. In India it is the 2nd most common surname.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 1.2Kas Deb(inferred from the name graph)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 3.6Kas Devi
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 3.7Kas Devi
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 Dev 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)
- #9 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 585 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 named Deb, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Devi in IN India, ID Indonesia, MY Malaysia and 1 more.
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: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Dev 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 | #116 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | listed | Dev | 64 |
| IN India | #2 | 84,232as Devi | 1 in 16K | 84K | Devi | 238 |
| ID Indonesia | #289 | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | #12 | Devi | 203 |
| MY Malaysia | #339 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 354 | Devi | 72 |
| NP Nepal | — | 7,418 | 1 in 4.1K | 7.4K | Dev | 53 |
| KW Kuwait | #263 | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Devi | 11 |
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; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); NPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only. 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)
Dev 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.
In English, Clipping of developer.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (zu sanskrit. deva »Gott«, auch übliche Anrede für Könige und Prinzen, etwa »Majestät«, »Hoheit«).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Dodata
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
In French, synonym of développeur (“dev”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-3 language code for Domung.
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)
- Narendra Devb. 1888INIndian poet
- Nabaneeta Dev Senb. 1938INIndian poet (1938-2019)
- Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Devb. 1947NPnepalese politician (born 1947), former king of Nepal (1950–1951; 2001–2008)
- Mukul Devb. 1970INIndian actor
- Deepak Devb. 1974INIndian composer
- Irene Devb. 1999ESSpanish actress and singer
- Adrian Devactor
- Nabarun Devresearcher
- Sukh Devbotanist
- Vashcar DevINIndian actor
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 60 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 88K | #67 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 65K | #256 |
| NP Nepal | NPHC 2021 — Population by caste/ethnicity group (national), surname-shaped categories only | 2021 | 7.4K | #84 |
Reference works 5
- 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
- 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 Dev mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘god’, often referring in particular to Indra; also a term of address for kings, equivalent to ‘Your Majesty’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What are other forms of the name Dev?
- In the etymology graph, Deo is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Dev have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 138 thousand people named Deb in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Dev most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dev is densest in Nepal — about 1 in 4.1 thousand people — even though Bangladesh holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Dev?
- In Nepal, the national register counted 7,418 people named Dev in 2021, about 1 in 4.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Dev compared with other names?
- In Bangladesh, Dev is the 116th most common surname of 12,312 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Dev?
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/devThe 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, “Dev” — the 116th most common surname in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.