Ramanujan
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Meaning
functions as a family identifier for the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, self-taught genius who made extraordinary contributions to number theory
The story
Ramanujan reads to most of the world as one man: Srinivasa Ramanujan, the self-taught mathematician from Tamil Nadu who, with almost no formal training, filled notebooks with results so strange and beautiful that when he mailed samples to Cambridge in 1913, G. H. Hardy concluded no one could have had the imagination to invent them. Invited to England, he produced groundbreaking work in number theory before dying in 1920 at just thirty-two, and mathematicians are still mining his notebooks a century later. In the South Indian tradition the name served as a family identifier rather than a chosen first name, and in the old readings its roots reach back to Rama, one of Hinduism's most beloved figures. In US records it surfaces only in the most recent decade: the rarest kind of tribute name, essentially unclaimed and impossible to mistake.
How popular is Ramanujan around the world?
Ramanujan does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
United States
under 5 a year
Ramanujan does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, England and Wales, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Ramanujan deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Ramanujan truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Ramanujan fits with your family’s names and surname.
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