Maitreya
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Future Buddha; depicted meditating with one leg crossed over the other
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: SSA, 2023
/məˈtɹaɪ.ə/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Maitreya is a given name used for both men and women, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia≈1 in 1.4Mfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- CLChile≈1 in 1.6M
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.9M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 57 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4M (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
India, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Future Buddha; depicted meditating with one leg crossed over the other.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
Where in the world
(measured from records)Maitreya 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4M | 6 | Maitreya | 57 |
| US United States | ≈76 est. | ≈1 in 4.5M | 7 | Maitreya | 38 |
| AU Australia | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 1.9M | 1 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 5.5M | — | Maitreya | 5 |
| CL Chile | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | 1 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | 8 | 1 in 2.2M | 8 | — | 1 |
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; SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). 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)Maitreya 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.
In English, A bodhisattva who is considered to be a future Buddha.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
name of several men (P); Siirya (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In Korean, Future Buddha.
as a nameKorea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
friendly; benevolent.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
In Croatian, bud. budući Buddha, peti i posljednji čije se pojavljivanje očekuje
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)- Sananda Maitreyab. 1962USAmerican singer
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)14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Maitreya mean, and where does it come from?
- Future Buddha; depicted meditating with one leg crossed over the other. Recorded by Korea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary.
- How do you pronounce Maitreya?
- It depends on the language: in English /məˈtɹaɪ.ə/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /maitrɛja/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- Is Maitreya a male or female name?
- Maitreya 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.
- Which countries have the most people named Maitreya?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.0 thousand people named Maitreya in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled maitreya. After it come United States, Australia, United Kingdom and Chile; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Maitreya?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 8 people named Maitreya, about 1 in 2.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Maitreya?
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/maitreyaThe 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, “Maitreya”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.