Mahendra
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘great Indra’, a byname of Vishnu in the Ramayana and of Shiva in Tantric texts; also the name of Emperor Asoka’s brother, the first great Buddhist missionary
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mahendra is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 76th most common given name.
- KWKuwait≈1 in 6.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 9.4K
- USUnited States1 in 148K
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)
- #745 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 273 (measured from records)
- 1 in 675 (inferred from the name graph)
≈34,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
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: ‘great Indra’, a byname of Vishnu in the Ramayana and of Shiva in Tantric texts; also the name of Emperor Asoka’s brother, the first great Buddhist missionary.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mahendra 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 | — | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 891 | 4 | Mahendra | 55 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | listed | Mahendra | 182 |
| LK Sri Lanka | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Mahendra | 24 |
| US United States | — | 2,253 | 1 in 148K | 2.2K | Mahendra | 265 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #472 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Mahendra | 50 |
| GY Guyana | — | 1,111 | 1 in 675 | 1.1K | — | 2 |
| QA Qatar | #290 | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Mahendra | 12 |
| KW Kuwait | #422 | ≈480 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Mahendra | 14 |
| BH Bahrain | #191 | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 6K | — | Mahendra | 8 |
| IN India | #76 | — | — | 1.4K | Mahendra | 273 |
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; the id-github-names register; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; 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)
Mahendra is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Indra, the great; an Indra among kings.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sanskrit. mahä »groß« + Name des Gottes
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In English, One of the holy mountains in India.
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)
- Mahendra Pratapb. 1886INIndian activist and journalist (1886-1979)
- Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Devb. 1920NPKing of Nepal (1920-1972)
- Mahendra Kapoorb. 1934INIndian singer (1934–2008)
- Mahendra Singh Tikaitb. 1935INfarmer leader and co-founder of Bharatiya Kisan Union
- Mahendra Singh Mewarb. 1941INIndian politician
- Mahendra Chaudhryb. 1942FJPrime Minister of Fiji (1999-2000)
- Mahendra Sandhub. 1947INactor
- Mahendra Karmab. 1950INIndian politician
- Mahendra Nath Pandeyb. 1957INIndian politician
- Mahendra Singh Dhonib. 1981INIndian cricket player (born 1981)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 43 sources across 26 countries.
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 Mahendra mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘great Indra’, a byname of Vishnu in the Ramayana and of Shiva in Tantric texts; also the name of Emperor Asoka’s brother, the first great Buddhist missionary. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Mahendra a male or female name?
- Mahendra 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.
- In which country does Mahendra have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 34 thousand people named Mahendra in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mahendra.
- Where is Mahendra most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mahendra is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 675 people — even though Nepal holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Mahendra?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,253 people named Mahendra in 2020, about 1 in 148 thousand residents.
- How common is Mahendra compared with other names?
- In India, Mahendra is the 76th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mahendra?
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/mahendraThe 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, “Mahendra” — the 76th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.