Sankara
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sankara is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 36th most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 246Kas Shankar(measured from records)
- NPNepal≈1 in 829as Shankar
- KWKuwait≈1 in 4.7Kas Shankar
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 Sankara 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.
- Nepal (inferred from the name graph)
- #502 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 299 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 829 (inferred from the name graph)
≈37,000 named Shankar, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, est., as Shankar
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shankar in IN India, US United States, BD Bangladesh and 5 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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sankara 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 | — | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 829 | 4 | Shankar | 60 |
| BD Bangladesh | #840 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Shankar | 43 |
| CN China | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 100K | — | Shankar | 17 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Shankar | 36 |
| AO Angola | #505 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Shankar | 3 |
| US United States | — | 1,352as Shankar | 1 in 246K | 3.3K | Shankar | 299 |
| KW Kuwait | — | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | — | Sankara | 5 |
| GY Guyana | #907 | 56as Shankar | 1 in 13K | 56 | Shankar | 6 |
| IN India | #36 | — | — | 1.1M | Shankar | 279 |
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: This page discusses the most common names in India based on an analysis of election and census data, published by Housen; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Sankara is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latvian, apdzīvota vieta Lielbritānijā (Sanquhar), Skotijā, Nitas kreisajā krastā
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Thomas Sankarab. 1949BFPresident of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987
- Mariam Sankarab. 1953BFpolitician
- Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankarab. 1959BFBurkinabe politician
- Odile Sankarab. 1963BFBurkinabè filmmaker
- Mamadou Sankarab. 1995NGassociation football 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 27 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | India Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive) | — | 25K | #232 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 115 | #47,514 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 22 | #47,514 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2020 | 8 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1971 | 8 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1987 | 7 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1969 | 7 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1981 | 6 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1975 | 6 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1961 | 6 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1972 | 5 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1959 | 5 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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
- Is Sankara a male or female name?
- Sankara 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 Sankara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 37 thousand people named Shankar in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Sankara?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,352 people named Shankar in 2020, about 1 in 246 thousand residents.
- How common is Sankara compared with other names?
- In India, Sankara is the 36th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sankara?
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/sankaraThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Sankara” — the 36th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.