Names of Indonesia ID

A large share of people in Indonesia carry a single name, with no family name to follow it; Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names records Nurhayati as the commonest given name in Indonesia.

Written in Indonesian.

Population
267M
Official registers
3
Name forms recorded
40K
BBuilt from 3 official registers, 39,640 name forms in our corpus, 11 cited works.

At least one official register, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Indonesia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Indonesia included.

How names work in Indonesia

3 naming traditions are in use in Indonesia, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Indonesia

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names — 10 given names counted over residents, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Nurhayati255K41
2Sulastri193K88
3Sumiati173K—
4Sri Wahyuni163K—
5Sumarni159K—
6Sunarti136K—
7Siti Aminah122K—
8Ernawati118K—
9Aminah117K—
10Kartini115K—

No inherited surnames here

A large share of Indonesians, Javanese especially, are mononymous, and where a second element exists it is frequently a patronymic or a given name rather than an inherited family name. ID's 12,785 given names and 0 surnames is therefore close to the right SHAPE; the 3,148 `full` rows from kitab-rangkaian-islami-2020 are the correct destination for compound Islamic names. Chinese-Indonesian surnames are a real but small sub-population. Our record corpus does hold "surnames" for this country, but they are largely records of residents from elsewhere, so we do not publish them as a ranking.

Where the two lists disagree

10 of Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names's top 10 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given namesAcross all recordsnurhayati: 1 → 41 · ranks lower across all records1. nurhayati41sulastri: 2 → 88 · ranks lower across all records2. sulastri88sumiati: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. sumiatinot rankedsri wahyuni: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. sri wahyuninot rankedsumarni: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. sumarninot rankedsunarti: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. sunartinot rankedsiti aminah: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. siti aminahnot rankedernawati: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. ernawatinot rankedaminah: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. aminahnot rankedkartini: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. kartininot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names on the left; every record we hold for Indonesia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Indonesia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Indonesia holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

TimurAdmMuhammadSriAgusNurulSitiDwiNurTriนฤมลรพีTeongJooCarmencitaAbdulDewiEkoAyuEkaBudiWahyuDianAdeDeliSlametBambangAchmadRizkiBesarAsepEndangAndiNurhayatiEdiAriIndahHeriAgungFitriDediAdiDesiDuaDedeAnnisaRizkyIdaJokoPutuIwanIndraAnitaIkaImamMadeArifBayuRinaRatna
Sized by how much of the difference between Indonesia's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Names in Indonesia are written in Latin (98%) and Thai (2%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.

Timurgiven name(measured from records)
Admgiven name(measured from records)
Muhammadgiven name(measured from records)
Srigiven name(measured from records)
Nurulgiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Indonesia, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Indonesia?
Nurhayati, according to Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names, with 254,922 bearers recorded among girls.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Indonesia?
Because they count different people. Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Nurhayati. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Muhammad. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Do people in Indonesia have surnames?
A large share of Indonesians, Javanese especially, are mononymous, and where a second element exists it is frequently a patronymic or a given name rather than an inherited family name. ID's 12,785 given names and 0 surnames is therefore close to the right SHAPE; the 3,148 `full` rows from kitab-rangkaian-islami-2020 are the correct destination for compound Islamic names. Chinese-Indonesian surnames are a real but small sub-population.
Is there one naming system in Indonesia?
No — 3 are described on this page (Indonesian and Malay, Balinese, Javanese), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Indonesia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/ID (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Dukcapil — e-KTP all-time given names.