Shalya
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: The brother of Madri (mother of Nakula and Sahadeva), as well as the ruler of the Madra kingdom in the Mahabharata (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: Siseministeerium, 2023
Shalya is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- INIndia≈1 in 1Mfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 2.7M
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 11Mfew records
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
- 28 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.0M (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
India, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)The brother of Madri (mother of Nakula and Sahadeva), as well as the ruler of the Madra kingdom in the Mahabharata.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
How Shalya is read
(measured from records)Shalya is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Hindi48%
throne
as a nameA Genealogists Guide to Indian Names A Reference for First Names from India
- English23%
The brother of Madri (mother of Nakula and Sahadeva), as well as the ruler of the Madra kingdom in the Mahabharata.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French9.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Shalya in French.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Shalya 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.
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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion); the ee-siseministeerium-registry register; the de-munich-vornamen register. 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).
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)10 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Shalya mean, and where does it come from?
- The brother of Madri (mother of Nakula and Sahadeva), as well as the ruler of the Madra kingdom in the Mahabharata. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Shalya a male or female name?
- Shalya is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020).
- Which countries have the most people named Shalya?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 thousand people named Shalya in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shalya. After it come United States and Malaysia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Shalya?
- In the United States, the national register counted 122 people named Shalya in 2020, about 1 in 2.7 million residents.
What do you want to know about Shalya?
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/shalyaThe 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, “Shalya” — ranked 59216th in India (Instate). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.