Gopal
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Hindu name, from Sanskrit gopdla ‘cowherd’ (from go ‘cow’ + pdla ‘protector’), an epithet of the god Krishna
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˌɡoʊˈpɑɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gopal is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nepal than in any other country. In India it is the 72nd most common given name.
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 4.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 13K
- USUnited States1 in 195K
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)
- #717 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 275 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 612 (inferred from the name graph)
≈50,000 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)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Hindu name, from Sanskrit gopdla ‘cowherd’ (from go ‘cow’ + pdla ‘protector’), an epithet of the god Krishna. It is only a male given name in India, but has come to be used as a surname among South Indians in the U.S.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gopal 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 | — | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 612 | 6 | Gopal | 64 |
| BD Bangladesh | #431 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Gopal | 48 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Gopal | 41 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Gopal | 66 |
| US United States | — | 1,702 | 1 in 195K | 1.8K | Gopal | 275 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Gopal | 29 |
| IN India | #72 | — | — | 8.5K | Gopal | 272 |
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; 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)
Gopal is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Sanskrit: ‘cowherd’, also used to mean ‘king’, the earth being regarded fancifully as the milch-cow of kings. It is a ae 299 byname of Krishna in the Mahabharata and among his cult worshippers.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, pers. name, Bengali
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Marathi
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, The cowherd
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In German, männl. Vom. indischer Herkunft (sanskrit. go »Kuh, Rind« + sanskrit. päla »Beschützer«: »Kuhhirte«), einer der Beina men von Krischna.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Gopal Krishna Gokhaleb. 1866INIndian political leader and social reformer (1866–1915)
- Gopala Chandra Praharajb. 1874INnot in their usual nameIndian lawyer and lexicographer (1874–1945)
- Gopal Swarup Pathakb. 1896INIndian politician and judge (1896-1982)
- Gopal Mittalb. 1906INIndian writer
- Gopal Gurunath Bewoorb. 1916INIndian Army general (1916–1989)
- Gopal Chhotrayb. 1916INIndian playwright (1916–2003)
- Gopal Godseb. 1919INAssinator of Gandhi
- Gopal Rajub. 1928USIndian businessman (1928-2008)
- Gopal Prasadb. 1945USIndian mathematician
- Gopala Krushna Rathb. 1945INnot in their usual nameIndian Odia-language writer (1945-2016)
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 57 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 7K | #353 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 3.4K | #2,073 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.8K | #16,007 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #21,535 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 726 | #30,383 |
Reference works 4
- 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
- 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 Gopal mean, and where does it come from?
- Hindu name, from Sanskrit gopdla ‘cowherd’ (from go ‘cow’ + pdla ‘protector’), an epithet of the god Krishna. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Gopal?
- In the etymology graph, Gopala is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gopal?
- A machine transcription gives /ˌɡoʊˈpɑɫ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Gopal a male or female name?
- Gopal 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 Gopal have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 50 thousand people named Gopal in Nepal, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gopal.
- How common is the name Gopal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,702 people named Gopal in 2020, about 1 in 195 thousand residents.
- How common is Gopal compared with other names?
- In India, Gopal is the 72nd most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gopal?
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/gopalThe 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, “Gopal” — the 72nd most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.