Rakesh
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘ruler of the day of the full-moon’, a byname of Shiva
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹeɪkʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rakesh is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 26th most common given name.
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 68K
- NPNepal≈1 in 666
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)
- #453 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 342 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 666 (inferred from the name graph)
≈46,000 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: ‘ruler of the day of the full-moon’, a byname of Shiva. Ram <¢ North Indian variant of RAMA.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rakesh 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 | — | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 666 | 1 | Rakesh | 54 |
| CN China | — | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Rakesh | 19 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Rakesh | 54 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Rakesh | 45 |
| AF Afghanistan | #668 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Rakesh | 12 |
| US United States | — | 4,920 | 1 in 68K | 4.9K | Rakesh | 342 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Rakesh | 63 |
| GY Guyana | — | 335 | 1 in 2.2K | 335 | — | 1 |
| IN India | #26 | — | — | 1.5K | Rakesh | 327 |
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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Rakesh Mohanb. 1948INIndian economist
- Rakesh Roshanb. 1949INIndian film director and producer
- Rakesh Sharmab. 1949INFirst Indian astronaut
- Rakesh Jainb. 1950USIndian-American cancer researcher and chemist (born 1950)
- Rakesh Pandeyb. 1955INPolitician from Punjab, India
- Rakesh Bedib. 1956INIndian actor
- Rakesh Jhunjhunwalab. 1960INIndian investor and trader (1960–2022)
- Rakesh Jhaverib. 1966INIndian Jain leader
- Rakesh Khuranab. 1967INAmerican business academic
- Rakesh Kumarb. 1982INIndian kabaddi player
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 43 sources across 24 countries.
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Where does the name Rakesh come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘ruler of the day of the full-moon’, a byname of Shiva. Ram <¢ North Indian variant of RAMA. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Rakesh?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹeɪkʃ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Rakesh a male or female name?
- Rakesh 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.
- What does the name Rakesh mean?
- Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘ruler of the day of the full-moon’, a byname of Shiva.
- In which country does Rakesh have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 46 thousand people named Rakesh in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rakesh.
- How common is the name Rakesh?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,920 people named Rakesh in 2020, about 1 in 68 thousand residents.
- How common is Rakesh compared with other names?
- In India, Rakesh is the 26th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rakesh?
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/rakeshThe 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, “Rakesh” — the 26th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.