Purohit

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Purohit is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country. Recorded meaning: A family priest.

rarermore common
  • INIndia1 in 176K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 312K
  • EEEstonia≈1 in 117K

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.

India (measured from records)

7,519 people

Sources
224 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 117K (inferred from the name graph)

Estonia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

A family priest.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Purohit 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.

Where Purohit is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India#9777,5191 in 176K7.5KPurohit205
US United States—1,0651 in 312K1.6KPurohit224
GB United Kingdom—≈370 est.≈1 in 176K507Purohit97
CA Canada—≈300 est.≈1 in 128K—Purohit48
IT Italy—≈110 est.≈1 in 584K—Purohit8
SG Singapore—≈40 est.≈1 in 157K—Purohit15
FI Finland—351 in 159K35—4
NZ New Zealand—≈35 est.≈1 in 140K—Purohit8
EE Estonia—≈11 est.≈1 in 117Klisted—2

7,519 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Purohit is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, United Kingdom, Panama

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Pùròhít

  • Thai surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Thailand

    Also written ปุโรหิต, ปูโรหิต, ปโรหต, ปโรหิต

  • Bangla surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Bangladesh, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Bangla, Odia

    Also written পুরোহিত

43 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1940196019802000Banwarilal Purohit, b. 1940Manohar Purohit, b. 1943Hemant J. Purohit, b. 1961Bhavini Purohit, b. 1991Namrata Purohit, b. 1993

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 24 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Purohit
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—7.5K#1,174
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.6K#17,564
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.1K#23,750
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—725#5,144
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000581#36,381
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002507#11,261
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—35#30,954
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Purohit mean, and where does it come from?
A family priest. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Purohit have the most bearers?
In India, the national register counted about 7.5 thousand people named Purohit, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled purohit.
How common is the name Purohit?
In India, the national register counted 7,519 people named Purohit, about 1 in 176 thousand residents.
How common is Purohit compared with other names?
In India, Purohit is the 977th most common surname of 1,492,515 surnames recorded there.

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/purohit

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Purohit” — the 977th most common surname in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Purohit parses inside a full name →