Shiva
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Sanskrit: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʃɪvə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Shiva is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 38th most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 112K(measured from records)
- KWKuwait≈1 in 1.7Kas Siva
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.4Kas Siva
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 Shiva 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.
- Nepal (inferred from the name graph)
- #504 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 286 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 836 (inferred from the name graph)
≈36,000 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 Shiv in IN India, QA Qatar, ID Indonesia, Siva in MY Malaysia, KW Kuwait, SG Singapore and Shibu 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: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra. Shiva is one of the most important of the Hindu gods, associated in particular with asceticism, generative power, and the dance of cosmic destruction.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Shiva 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 | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 836 | 1 | Shiva | 70 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Shiv | 14 |
| MY Malaysia | #651 | ≈9,200 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Siva | 66 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Shibu | 31 |
| US United States | — | 2,982 | 1 in 112K | 2.2K | Shiva | 286 |
| SG Singapore | #235 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Siva | 65 |
| KW Kuwait | #83 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Siva | 19 |
| QA Qatar | #222 | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Shiv | 21 |
| IN India | #38 | — | — | 18K | Shiv | 251 |
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; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Shiva 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.
In English, A weeklong period of formal mourning for a close relative.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, alternative spelling of Xiva
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, Shiva (Hindu deity)
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)
- Shiva Nath Katjub. 1910INpolitician (1910–1996)
- Shivmangal Singh Sumanb. 1915INnot in their usual nameHindi poet
- Shiva Kumar Raib. 1919NPIndian writer of Nepali language (1919–1995)
- Shiva Naipaulb. 1945TTTrinidad and Tobago writer (1945–1985)
- Shiva Rajkumarb. 1961INKannada film actor
- Shiva Regmib. 1965NPNepali film director
- Shiva Roseb. 1969USAmerican actress
- Cosma Shiva Hagenb. 1981USGerman actress
- Shiva Negarb. 1992CAIranian-Canadian actress and model
- Shiva Tafari Nagasawab. 2001JPJapanese association football player
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 59 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #5,665 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #5,665 |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 44 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 24 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 13 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 7 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Shiva mean, and where does it come from?
- Sanskrit: ‘benign’, ‘auspicious’; originally a euphemistic epithet of the terrifying god of destruction, Rudra. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Shiva?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃɪvə/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Shiva a male or female name?
- Shiva 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 Shiva?
- In the etymology graph, Shivah is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Shiva have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Shiva in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shiva.
- How common is the name Shiva?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,982 people named Shiva in 2020, about 1 in 112 thousand residents.
- How common is Shiva compared with other names?
- In India, Shiva is the 38th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Shiva?
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/shivaThe 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, “Shiva” — the 38th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.