Mani
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Central African/Congolese: title meaning 'lord' or 'king'; also a Congolese male name meaning 'from the mountain' (African Names)
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
- France (INSEE, 2024): listed as male
- Norway (SSB): listed as male
- Brazil (IBGE): listed under both sexes
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 46 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Mani is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- ISIceland1 in 1.2K(measured from records)
- INIndia≈1 in 2.7K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 3.9K
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
- 274 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈540,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Iceland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)Central African/Congolese: title meaning 'lord' or 'king'; also a Congolese male name meaning 'from the mountain'
Cited for this meaning 1
- African Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Mani 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 | #479 | ≈540,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 10K | Mani | 246 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | — | Mani | 42 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 61K | — | Mani | 19 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Mani | 65 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | — | Mani | 26 |
| US United States | — | 1,888 | 1 in 176K | 3K | Mani | 274 |
| SG Singapore | #283 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Mani | 47 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 6.4K | 12 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | — | 289 | 1 in 1.2K | 289 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)Mani 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.
, occasionally 2 Sanskrit: ‘jewel’; also used to denote the phallus. The name carries magical or mystical connotations. It is often used as a short form of Subrahmanya, son of Shiva and brother of Ganesh.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Indian (Kerala)r among Christians from Kerala, a pet form of Emmanuel. It is only a given name in Kerala, but in the U.S. used as a family name among people from Kerala.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
acronym/toponym; Elijah ben Suleiman Mani, rabbi in Iraq
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
He came from the mountain
as a nameThe book of African names
Krsna (N); Visnu (N)
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
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)- Mani Kaulb. 1944INIndian film director of Hindi films (1944-2011)
- Mani Damodara Chakyarb. 1946INIndian actor
- Mani Ratnamb. 1955INIndian film director
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)85 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 46 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Mani mean, and where does it come from?
- Central African/Congolese: title meaning 'lord' or 'king'; also a Congolese male name meaning 'from the mountain' Recorded by African Names.
- Is Mani a male or female name?
- Mani is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes; France (INSEE, 2024): listed as male; Norway (SSB): listed as male; Brazil (IBGE): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
- Which countries have the most people named Mani?
- Mondonomo estimates about 541 thousand people named Mani in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mani. After it come Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia and Malaysia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Mani most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mani is densest in Iceland — about 1 in 1.2 thousand people — even though India holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Mani?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,888 people named Mani in 2020, about 1 in 176 thousand residents.
- How common is Mani compared with other names?
- In India, Mani is the 479th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mani?
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/maniThe 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, “Mani” — ranked 966th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.