Nair
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu (Nayar) name denoting membership of the Nayar community, which is from Malayalam ndyar ‘leader’, ‘lord’, ‘soldier’ (from Sanskrit ndya(ka) ‘leader’ + the honorific plural ending -r) (Dictionary of American Family Names)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 32 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Nair is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country: 93,517 people, counted by Instate.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2.7Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- YTMayotte≈1 in 4K
- INIndia1 in 14K
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 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 111 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
93,517 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Malayalamndyar(measured from records)
- Sanskritndyaka(measured from records)
Hindu (Nayar) name denoting membership of the Nayar community, which is from Malayalam ndyar ‘leader’, ‘lord’, ‘soldier’ (from Sanskrit ndya(ka) ‘leader’ + the honorific plural ending -r). The Nayars were regarded as protectors of the land.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Nair is found
(measured from records)Nair 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 | — | 93,517 | 1 in 14K | 94K | Nair | 65 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Nair | 20 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Nair | 20 |
| US United States | — | 7,513 | 1 in 44K | 11K | Nair | 99 |
| AO Angola | #626 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Nair | 16 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Nair | 20 |
| YT Mayotte | — | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 4K | 5 | — | — |
93,517 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 976 (Mayotte). 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)Nair 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.
reduced form of McNair.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A member of a group of Indian Hindu castes originating from Kerala.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romansh, black
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)- Devan Nairb. 1923MYMalaysian-Singaporean politician, 3rd President of Singapore (1923–2005)
- Mira Nairb. 1957INIndian-American filmmaker (born 1957)
- Staz Nairb. 1991GBEnglish singer and actor
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)58 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 32 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Nair mean, and where does it come from?
- Hindu (Nayar) name denoting membership of the Nayar community, which is from Malayalam ndyar ‘leader’, ‘lord’, ‘soldier’ (from Sanskrit ndya(ka) ‘leader’ + the honorific plural ending -r). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Nair?
- In India, the national register counted about 94 thousand people named Nair, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nair. After it come Malaysia, South Africa, United States and Angola; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Nair?
- In India, the national register counted 93,517 people named Nair, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Nair compared with other names?
- In Angola, Nair is the 626th most common surname of 23,432 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nair?
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/nairThe 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, “Nair” — ranked 196th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.