Gounder
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A title used by various communities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɡaʊ̯ndə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gounder is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 24K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 70K
- USUnited States1 in 383Kas Counter
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 Gounder 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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 126 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,300 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
A title used by various communities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gounder 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Gounder | 37 |
| US United States | 869as Counter | 1 in 383K | 872 | Gounder | 126 |
| AU Australia | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 70K | — | Gounder | 79 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Gounder | 42 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 213K | — | Gounder | 11 |
| IN India | 88 | 1 in 15M | 88 | Gounder | 50 |
| IE Ireland | ≈26 est. | ≈1 in 200K | — | Gounder | 3 |
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 2000; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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)
Gounder 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.
Tamil title meaning 'landowner', linked to Vellalar community.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
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)
- Lingaya Kalingaraya Gounderb. 1240chieftain of Kongu Nadu
- Dheeran Chinnamalaib. 1757INnot in their usual nameKonguNadu chieftain, Indian Freedom Fighter, Revolutionist (1757-1805)
- K. Palaniswamib. 1954INnot in their usual nameIndian politician and former chief minister of Tamil Nadu
- Navaneeda K. Gounderb. 1957FJFijian footballer
- Vanessa Goundenb. 1961ZAnot in their usual namepolitician
- M. M. Sundreshb. 1962INnot in their usual namejudge of Madras High Court
- M. P. Saminathanb. 1964INnot in their usual nameIndian politician
- Céline Gounderb. 1977USAmerican infectious disease physician, internist, epidemiologist, filmmaker, and medical journalist
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)
Attested in 8 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 337 | #63,879 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 271 | #71,886 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 199 | #1,813 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 186 | #91,801 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 88 | #31,070 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 81 | #215 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 57 | #1,325 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 40 | #41,249 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 10 | #1,060 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Gounder mean, and where does it come from?
- A title used by various communities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Gounder?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡaʊ̯ndə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gounder have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.3 thousand people named Gounder in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gounder.
- How common is the name Gounder?
- In India, the national register counted 88 people named Gounder, about 1 in 15 million residents.
What do you want to know about Gounder?
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/gounderThe 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, “Gounder”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.