Shashi
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: literally ‘having a hare’, an epithet of the moon (the visible features of the moon being interpreted as resembling a hare)
Used for both men and women· registers list it under both sexes; no split published
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Shashi is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- LKSri Lanka≈1 in 1.7Kfew records
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 17Kfew records
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 Shashi itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 252 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈890,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
India, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled שאשי in ET Ethiopia.
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: literally ‘having a hare’, an epithet of the moon (the visible features of the moon being interpreted as resembling a hare). It is often found as the first element in compound names such as Shashikant ‘beloved of the moon’ and Sashichand ‘the hare-marked moon’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shashi 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 | #279 | ≈890,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 577 | Shashi | 252 |
| LK Sri Lanka | #446 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Shashi | 27 |
| US United States | — | 1,821 | 1 in 183K | 1.1K | Shashi | 243 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 188K | — | Shashi | 31 |
| ET Ethiopia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 101K | — | שאשי | 3 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | — | ≈640 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Shashi | 43 |
| BH Bahrain | #730 | ≈99 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Shashi | 3 |
| QA Qatar | — | ≈90 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Shashi | 9 |
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. 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)Shashi is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Botswana river name
as a nameAfrican Names
moonbeam
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
In Swahili, thin muslin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Silts vai svelmains siroko vējš
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)- Shashi Bhattb. 1930INbadminton player
- Shashi B. Bhatiab. 1930INIndian palaeontologist and palaeobotanist
- Shashikumar Chitreb. 1936INnot in their usual nameIndian mathematician and astrophysicist
- Shashi Kapoorb. 1938INIndian film actor and producer (1938–2017)
- Shashi Deshpandeb. 1938INIndian writer
- Shashi Wadhwab. 1948INIndian scientist
- Shashi Tharoorb. 1956INIndian politician, diplomat, author
- Shashi Shekhar VempatiIndian technocrat and media executive
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)30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- What does the name Shashi mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: literally ‘having a hare’, an epithet of the moon (the visible features of the moon being interpreted as resembling a hare). Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- What are other forms of the name Shashi?
- In the etymology graph, Sashi is a form of the same name in other languages.
- Is Shashi a male or female name?
- Shashi is used for both men and women. National registers that list it by sex count it under both: United States (Census Bureau, 2020). We don't publish a percentage split.
- In which country does Shashi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 891 thousand people named Shashi in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shashi.
- How common is the name Shashi?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,821 people named Shashi in 2020, about 1 in 183 thousand residents.
- How common is Shashi compared with other names?
- In India, Shashi is the 279th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shashi?
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/shashiThe 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, “Shashi” — the 279th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.