Desai

22,954 people in the United States were counted with the surname Desai in the 2020 census, making it the 1,518th most common in the country. That is about one person in 13,000.

By the numbers

People: 22,954
Rank: 1,518th
How common: 1 in 13,000
Per 100,000: 7.7

Where the name comes from

Origin Gujarati

Borrowed from mr देसाई (“leader of a village”), or from Gujarati દેસાઈ. This surname is mostly found in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Desai described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 93.2%
White, not Hispanic 3.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.6%
Hispanic or Latino 0.5%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.2%

Notable people called Desai

Morarji Desai (1896–1995)Prime Minister of India
Kiran Desai (born 1971)Indian author
Anita Desai (born 1937)Indian novelist, University professor
Prachi Desai (born 1988)Indian actress
Tina Desai (born 1987)Indian actress
Meghnad Desai, Baron Desai (1940–2025)British economist and politician
Padma Desai (1931–2023)economist

People named Desai with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Desai

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.