Raj
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘king’, applied to various gods, for example Varuna, Aditya, Indra, and Yama
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Raj is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country. In India it is the 3rd most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 45K(measured from records)
- PKPakistan≈1 in 413as Raja
- KWKuwait≈1 in 681as Raju
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 Raj 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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- #182 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 393 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 308 (inferred from the name graph)
≈570,000 named Raja, 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:
Locally spelled Raju in IN India, BD Bangladesh, KW Kuwait and 3 more and Raja 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)
Sanskrit: ‘king’, applied to various gods, for example Varuna, Aditya, Indra, and Yama. It is aname of Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava prince in the Mahabharata.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Raj 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #102 | ≈570,000 est. | ≈1 in 413 | listed | Raja | 126 |
| BD Bangladesh | #32 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 883 | listed | Raju | 91 |
| NP Nepal | — | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 308 | 5.1K | Raju | 76 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈79,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | listed | Raju | 81 |
| MY Malaysia | #257 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 842 | — | Raj | 91 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #891 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 735 | — | Raju | 35 |
| US United States | — | 7,427 | 1 in 45K | 6.6K | Raj | 393 |
| KW Kuwait | #43 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 681 | — | Raju | 28 |
| IN India | #3 | — | — | 81K | Raju | 318 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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)
Raj 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, Hindu name from Sanskrit raja ‘king’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
In sit-pro, wait, linger
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In mh, whale
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-3 language code for Rajasthani.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, swarm, (of birds) flock
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)
- Raj Singh Ib. 1629INMaharana of Mewar Kingdom (1629-1680)
- Raj Chandra Boseb. 1901INIndian mathematician (1901–1987)
- Mulk Raj Anandb. 1905INIndian English writer (1905–2004)
- Raj Kapoorb. 1924INIndian actor and filmmaker (1924–1988)
- Raj Khoslab. 1925INIndian film director (1925-1991)
- Raj Reddyb. 1937INIndian-American computer scientist
- Raj Babbarb. 1952INIndian actor and politician (born 1952)
- Aditya Raj Kapoorb. 1956INIndian actor and film maker
- Raj Kundrab. 1975GBBritish businessman
- Raj Chettyb. 1979USAmerican economist
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 70 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6.6K | #3,015 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 874 | #3,015 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 32 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 27 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 22 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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 Raj come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘king’, applied to various gods, for example Varuna, Aditya, Indra, and Yama. It is aname of Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava prince in the Mahabharata. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What are other forms of the name Raj?
- In the etymology graph, Raja is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name Raj mean?
- Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘king’, applied to various gods, for example Varuna, Aditya, Indra, and Yama.
- Is Raj a male or female name?
- Raj 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 Raj have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 566 thousand people named Raja in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Raj?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,427 people named Raj in 2020, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Raj compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Raj is the 102nd most common given name of 77,659 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Raj?
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/rajThe 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, “Raj” — the 102nd most common given name in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.