Prakash
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Prakash is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 39th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Sanskrit: ‘light’, ‘famous’.
- NPNepal≈1 in 333(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.4K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 5.7K
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)
- #515 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 337 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 333 (inferred from the name graph)
≈91,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nepal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Prokash in BD Bangladesh.
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: ‘light’, ‘famous’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Prakash 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 | — | ≈91,000 est. | ≈1 in 333 | 14 | Prakash | 106 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Prakash | 109 |
| BD Bangladesh | #791 | ≈7,000 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Prokash | 35 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | 738 | Prakash | 65 |
| US United States | — | 4,008 | 1 in 83K | 3.9K | Prakash | 337 |
| SG Singapore | #590 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | — | Prakash | 81 |
| GY Guyana | — | 195 | 1 in 3.8K | 195 | — | — |
| IN India | #39 | — | — | 39K | Prakash | 316 |
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; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Prakash is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A male given name from Sanskrit. It is a common name among Indic races, mostly Hindus, with some usage among Jains, Sikhs and recently Indic Christians.
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)
- Prakash Mehrab. 1939INFilm producer and director (1939–2009)
- Prakash Karatb. 1948INIndian politician
- Prakash Javadekarb. 1951INIndian politician
- Prakash Jhab. 1952INIndian film director and producer (born 1952)
- Prakash Padukoneb. 1955INIndian badminton player
- Jagat Prakash Naddab. 1960IN11th President of the Bharatiya Janata Party
- Prakash Rajb. 1965INIndian film actor, director, producer, and television presenter
- White Townb. 1966INnot in their usual nameBritish-Indian singer and musician
- Prakash BelawadiINIndian film director
- Prakash BareINIndian actor and producer
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 51 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 39K | #385 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 39K | #32 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.9K | #8,050 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.5K | #12,447 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.4K | #18,693 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Prakash mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘light’, ‘famous’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Prakash a male or female name?
- Prakash 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 Prakash have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 91 thousand people named Prakash in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled prakash.
- How common is the name Prakash?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,008 people named Prakash in 2020, about 1 in 83 thousand residents.
- How common is Prakash compared with other names?
- In India, Prakash is the 39th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Prakash?
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/prakashThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Prakash” — the 39th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.