Siva
given name · Latin script
Meaning: The name Of a god.’ A devaputta, named Siva, is mentioned in the Saṃyutta2 as visiting the Buddha and speaking several verses on the benefit of consorting only with the good
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sajvə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Siva is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 38th most common given name.
- KWKuwait≈1 in 1.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.4K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 3.5K
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 Siva 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)
- #504 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 286 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈36,000 named Shiva, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Kuwait, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Shiv in IN India, BR Brazil, QA Qatar and 1 more, Shiva in US United States, NP Nepal and Shibu in BD Bangladesh.
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)
The name Of a god.’ A devaputta, named Siva, is mentioned in the Saṃyutta2 as visiting the Buddha and speaking several verses on the benefit of consorting only with the good. I t is interesting that Buddhaghosa makes no particular comment on the name in this context. In the Samantapāsādikā.’ however, he refers to the worship of the Sivaliñga. mention is made of KhandadevaSivādi¬ paricaraṇaṃ.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Siva 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 | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 836 | 1 | Shiva | 70 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Shiv | 14 |
| MY Malaysia | #651 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Siva | 66 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Shibu | 31 |
| US United States | — | 2,982as Shiva | 1 in 112K | 2.2K | Shiva | 286 |
| SG Singapore | #235 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Siva | 65 |
| KW Kuwait | #83 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Siva | 19 |
| QA Qatar | #222 | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Shiv | 21 |
| BR Brazil | — | 45 | 1 in 4.7M | 28K | Shiv | 7 |
| IN India | #38 | — | — | 18K | Shiv | 251 |
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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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)
Siva 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 pi, A palaceguard, paramour of Anulā. He reigned for fourteen months, at the end of which time he was killed in favour of Vaṭuka.’
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
In pi, One of the ten sons of Muṭasiva.’ He reigned for ten years and established the Nagaraṅganavihāra.’ Ibid., xviff. 45.
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
In pi, One of the eleven children of Paṇḍuvāsudeva and Kaccāna.’
as a nameDictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H)
(Hin) name for Siva (god of destruction)
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
Agni (V); Indra (५); Aghora (N); Ardhanarisvara
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
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)
- Siva Prasad Barooahb. 1880INIndian journalist and tea planter (1880–1938)
- Siva Selliahb. 1924LKSri Lankan judge (1924–1997)
- Siva Shankar Babab. 1949INHindu spiritual leader
- Siva S. Bandab. 1951USAmerican aerospace engineer
- Siva Vaidhyanathanb. 1966USAmerican academic
- Siva Balajib. 1980INIndian Tamil, Telugu actor
- Siva Kaneswaranb. 1988IEIrish singer
- Siva Kumarb. 1990INcricketer
- Siva II of Anuradhapuraking of Anuradhapura
- Siva Simha MallaNPMalla ruler
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 52 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #9,072 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 247 | #9,072 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 70 | #28,233 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 45 | — |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 34 | #36,975 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 30 | #71,575 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 20 | #64,415 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 8 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2014 | 4 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 1 | — |
| NP Nepal | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #303 |
| IN India | A Genealogist's Guide to Indian Names (Ellefson, 2002) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- How do you pronounce Siva?
- A machine transcription gives /sajvə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Siva mean, and where does it come from?
- The name Of a god.’ A devaputta, named Siva, is mentioned in the Saṃyutta2 as visiting the Buddha and speaking several verses on the benefit of consorting only with the good. Recorded by Dictionary of Pali Proper Names Vol II (N-H).
- In which country does Siva have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Shiva in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold.
- Is Siva a male or female name?
- Siva 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.
- How common is the name Siva?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 45 people named Siva in 2022, about 1 in 4.7 million residents.
- How common is Siva compared with other names?
- In India, Siva is the 38th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Siva?
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/sivaThe 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, “Siva” — the 38th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.