Sadhu
given name · Latin script
Meaning: straight; right. unerring; peaceful; excellent; good; virtuous; classical; pure; noble; sage; seer
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/sɑːdhuː/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sadhu is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bangladesh than in any other country.
- BHBahrain≈1 in 70K(inferred from the name graph)
- KWKuwait≈1 in 129K
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 728K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Sadhu itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Bangladesh (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 136 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 70K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,000 named সুধু, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bahrain, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Sudhu 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)
straight; right. unerring; peaceful; excellent; good; virtuous; classical; pure; noble; sage; seer.
Sources 1
- The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sadhu 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BD Bangladesh | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 161K | — | Sudhu | 24 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 728K | — | Sadhu | 34 |
| US United States | 113 | 1 in 2.9M | 9.8K | Sadhu | 133 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 2.1M | 4 | Sadhu | 7 |
| CA Canada | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 743K | 1 | Sadhu | 7 |
| KW Kuwait | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 129K | — | Sadhu | 5 |
| BH Bahrain | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 70K | — | Sadhu | 2 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — Form-33 List of Contesting Candidates, 2018 General Election; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Sadhu 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.
Agni (V); Aghora (N); Balarama _ (N);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In English, An ascetic or practitioner of yoga (yogi) who has given up pursuit of the first three Hindu goals of life: kama (enjoyment), artha (practical objectives) and even dharma (duty).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Apkārtklejojošs svētais hinduismā, kas sevi veltī vienam mērķim - mokšai jeb atsvabinātībai no ciklisko reinkarnāciju riteņa
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Sadhu Vaswanib. 1879INIndian educationer, humanitarian and spiritual leader (1879-1966)
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)
Attested in 20 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 394 | #56,084 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 229 | #82,317 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 122 | #128,797 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Sadhu mean, and where does it come from?
- straight; right. unerring; peaceful; excellent; good; virtuous; classical; pure; noble; sage; seer. Recorded by The Penguin book of Hindu names for boys.
- How do you pronounce Sadhu?
- A machine transcription gives /sɑːdhuː/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Sadhu a male or female name?
- Sadhu 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.
- What are other forms of the name Sadhu?
- In the etymology graph, Saddhu is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Sadhu have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.0 thousand people named সুধু in Bangladesh, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Sadhu?
- In the United States, the national register counted 113 people named Sadhu in 2020, about 1 in 2.9 million residents.
What do you want to know about Sadhu?
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/sadhuThe 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, “Sadhu”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.