Madhu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘sweet’, ‘honey’; also ‘springtime’; name of a legendary king, one of whose descendants was the god Krishna
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɑdhu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Madhu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 111K(measured from records)
- NPNepal≈1 in 2K
- AOAngola≈1 in 16K
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.
- Nepal (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 291 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, 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)
Sanskrit: ‘sweet’, ‘honey’; also ‘springtime’; name of a legendary king, one of whose descendants was the god Krishna.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Madhu 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 | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Madhu | 44 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Madhu | 35 |
| US United States | — | 2,998 | 1 in 111K | 1.9K | Madhu | 291 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Madhu | 1 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Madhu | 30 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Madhu | 38 |
| IN India | #285 | — | — | 2.6K | Madhu | 255 |
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)
Madhu 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.
sweet. delicious; charming; delightful; honey; nectar; sugar; wine.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
name of many men (P); Krsna (N); Natega (N);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In German, weibl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sanskrit. madhu »süß, Süße; Honig«).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In kaw, honey; mead; syrup
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In kaw, honey
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Madhu Limayeb. 1922INSocialist essayist and activist (1922-1995)
- Madhu Dandavateb. 1924INIndian politician (1924-2005)
- Madhu Ambatb. 1949INIndian cinematographer
- Madhu Sudanb. 1966INIndian computer scientist
- Madhu Sapreb. 1971INIndian model
- Madhu Mantenab. 1975INIndian film producer
- Madhubalab. 1976INnot in their usual nameIndian actress, born 1976
- Madhu Shalinib. 1989INIndian film actress and model
- Madhu Mohanab. 1991SGSingaporean footballer
- Madhu TrehanINIndian 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)
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 43 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | India Names Dataset — Andhra Pradesh Electoral Rolls (Internet Archive) | — | 69K | #71 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1993 | 9.4K | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1992 | 9.2K | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1994 | 8.3K | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1991 | 8K | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1987 | 7.6K | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 1985 | 7.5K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.9K | #5,642 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #5,642 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2017 | 5 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2016 | 1 | — |
| IN India | Sunama Sarit — Sanskrit Names (2020) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Madhu mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘sweet’, ‘honey’; also ‘springtime’; name of a legendary king, one of whose descendants was the god Krishna. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Madhu?
- A machine transcription gives /mɑdhu/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Madhu a male or female name?
- Madhu is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Madhu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Madhu in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled madhu.
- How common is the name Madhu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,998 people named Madhu in 2020, about 1 in 111 thousand residents.
- How common is Madhu compared with other names?
- In India, Madhu is the 285th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Madhu?
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/madhuThe 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, “Madhu” — the 285th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.