Kumar
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kuˈmɑɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kumar is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 88(inferred from the name graph)
- NPNepal≈1 in 108
- KWKuwait≈1 in 122
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 Kumar 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.
- India (measured from records)
- #4 (measured from records)
- 14 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 498 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 88 (inferred from the name graph)
1,661,649 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Arab Emirates, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kumari in KW Kuwait, AE United Arab Emirates, QA Qatar and Kumara 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)
Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’. It is also an epithet of the god Kartikeya, the son of Shiva. It commonly occurs as the final element of compound given names, and sometimes as a personal name in its own right.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kumar 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | #1 | 1,661,649 | 1 in 798 | 1.7M | Kumar | 421 |
| ID Indonesia | #428 | ≈320,000 est. | ≈1 in 825 | listed | Kumar | 134 |
| BD Bangladesh | #18 | ≈300,000 est. | ≈1 in 545 | listed | Kumar | 127 |
| NP Nepal | #777 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 108 | 2 | Kumar | 107 |
| PK Pakistan | #84 | ≈200,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Kumar | 119 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #9 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 124 | — | Kumara | 97 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #159 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 88 | — | Kumari | 53 |
| QA Qatar | #153 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 99 | — | Kumari | 26 |
| KW Kuwait | #46 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 122 | — | Kumari | 13 |
1,661,649 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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; 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)
Kumar 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.
Sanskrit: ‘boy’, ‘son’, or ‘prince’; a byname of the beautiful youth Skanda, son of Shiva. Feminine form: Kumari (‘daughter’, ‘princess’: an epithet of Shiva’s wife). 300 L
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Hindi, either a variant spelling of Kumer or a variant of Humar, a topographic name for someone who lived on a hill, from holm (dialectally hum ‘hill’, ‘height’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, ‘Child, son, prince’, from Sanskrit kumāra.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sanskrit. kumära »Junge; Sohn«).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
l<USKO
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Dilip Kumarb. 1922INIndian actor and politician (1922-2021)
- Rajendra Kumarb. 1929INIndian actor (1929–1999)
- Sri Chinmoyb. 1931BDnot in their usual nameIndian writer and spiritual teacher (1931–2007)
- Meira Kumarb. 1945INIndian politician
- Nitish Kumarb. 1951INIndian politician and Current Chief Minister of Bihar
- Vijay Kumarb. 1962INIndian roboticist
- Akshay Kumarb. 1967INActor
- Ajith Kumarb. 1971INactor, racer and producer
- Pooja Kumarb. 1977USAmerican actress
- Sushil Kumarb. 1983INIndian wrestler
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)
Attested in 78 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.7M | #13 |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- Where does the name Kumar come from?
- Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’. It is also an epithet of the god Kartikeya, the son of Shiva. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kumar?
- A machine transcription gives /kuˈmɑɹ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Kumar mean?
- Recorded meaning: Hindu name found in several communities, from Sanskrit kumdra ‘child’, ‘son’, ‘prince’.
- In which country does Kumar have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 1.7 million people named Kumar, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kumar.
- How common is the name Kumar?
- In India, the national register counted 1,661,649 people named Kumar, about 1 in 798 residents.
- How common is Kumar compared with other names?
- In India, Kumar is the most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kumar?
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/kumarThe 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, “Kumar” — the most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.