Ganesan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu name from Sanskrit ganesa ‘lord of the army’ (see Ganesh) + the Tamil-Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ɡanəsan/(machine-generated) Malay · model-generated
Ganesan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 3.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 9.1K
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 13Kfew records
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 235 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Hindu name from Sanskrit ganesa ‘lord of the army’ (see Ganesh) + the Tamil-Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n. This is found only as a given name in India, but has come to be used as a family name in the U.S.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Ganesan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #509 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 762 | Ganesan | 62 |
| US United States | — | 1,115 | 1 in 298K | 1.9K | Ganesan | 235 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #666 | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Ganesan | 35 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 83K | — | Ganesan | 18 |
| SG Singapore | #390 | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | — | Ganesan | 57 |
| OM Oman | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Ganesan | 12 |
| BH Bahrain | #792 | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Ganesan | 7 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity). 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)- Sivaji Ganesanb. 1928INIndian stage and film actor (1928-2001)
- Rengaian Ganesanb. 1963INbotanist
- Venkatraman Ganesanb. 1985DEGerman cricketer
- Sanjana Ganesanb. 1991INIndian Sports Journalist
- Trivadi Ganesanresearcher
- Timothy Ganesanresearcher
- Kumar GanesanCNresearcher
- Pandian GanesanKRresearcher
- A. GanesanUSresearcher
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)Evidence
(measured from records)24 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #15,213 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #22,944 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 533 | #38,942 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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)
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 Ganesan mean, and where does it come from?
- Hindu name from Sanskrit ganesa ‘lord of the army’ (see Ganesh) + the Tamil-Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Ganesan?
- In Malay /ɡanəsan/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Ganesan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.1 thousand people named Ganesan in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ganesan.
- How common is the name Ganesan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,115 people named Ganesan in 2010, about 1 in 298 thousand residents.
- How common is Ganesan compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Ganesan is the 509th most common surname of 291,743 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ganesan?
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/ganesanThe 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, “Ganesan” — the 509th most common surname in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.