Ganesh
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘lord of the hosts’, a title of the god Shiva and the name of his eldest son, who has the head of an elephant and the body of a short fat imp with a huge belly
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡəɲejʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ganesh is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In Guyana it is the 25th most common given name.
- GYGuyana1 in 692(measured from records)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 5.6K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 6.6K
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.
- Nepal (inferred from the name graph)
- #687 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 307 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 356 (inferred from the name graph)
≈85,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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: ‘lord of the hosts’, a title of the god Shiva and the name of his eldest son, who has the head of an elephant and the body of a short fat imp with a huge belly. Gauri ° Sanskrit: ‘white’, a byname of Shiva’s previously dark-skinned wife who, after being teased by Shiva, acquired a brilliant white complexion through meditation in the Himalayas.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ganesh 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NP Nepal | — | ≈85,000 est. | ≈1 in 356 | 2 | Ganesh | 81 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | Ganesh | 56 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Ganesh | 24 |
| MY Malaysia | #562 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | — | Ganesh | 71 |
| US United States | — | 2,974 | 1 in 112K | 3K | Ganesh | 307 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #689 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Ganesh | 26 |
| SG Singapore | #485 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | — | Ganesh | 72 |
| GY Guyana | #25 | 1,084 | 1 in 692 | 1.1K | Ganesh | 8 |
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; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; 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)
Ganesh 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.
Hindu name from Sanskrit ganesa ‘lord of the army’ (from gana ‘army’ + Tsa), an epithet of the elephant-headed god who is the son of Shiva. Among Tamil and Malayalam speakers who have migrated from their home states it is a variant of Ganesan. It is found only as a male given name in India, but used as a family name in the U.S. among South Indians.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
El señor de las multitudes
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
son of Shiva and Parvati
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
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)
- Ganesh Duttb. 1868INIndian administrator
- Ganesh Prasadb. 1876INIndian mathematician (1876-1935)
- Ganesh Vasudev Mavalankarb. 1888INIndian politician (1888–1956)
- Ganesh Rango Bhideb. 1909Indian encylopaedist (1909–1981)
- Ganesh Haloib. 1936INIndian artist (born 1936)
- Ganesh Patrob. 1945INIndian film writer (1945-2015)
- Ganesh Acharyab. 1971INIndian choreographer and occasional film actor active in Bollywood
- Ganesh Hegdeb. 1974INIndian singer, performer, video director and choreographer
- Ganesh Venkatramanb. 1980INIndian actor
- Ganesh YadavINIndian 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).
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 51 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3K | #5,680 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 1.1K | #47 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13 | #5,680 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2021 | 6 | — |
| NP Nepal | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 2 | #77 |
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 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
- What does the name Ganesh mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘lord of the hosts’, a title of the god Shiva and the name of his eldest son, who has the head of an elephant and the body of a short fat imp with a huge belly. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Ganesh?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡəɲejʃ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Ganesh a male or female name?
- Ganesh 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 Ganesh have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 85 thousand people named Ganesh in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ganesh.
- How common is the name Ganesh?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,974 people named Ganesh in 2020, about 1 in 112 thousand residents.
- How common is Ganesh compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Ganesh is the 25th most common given name of 15,440 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ganesh?
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/ganeshThe 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, “Ganesh” — the 25th most common given name in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.