Explore the Family Name Balachandran

The meaning of Balachandran

Indian (Kerala, Tamil Nadu): from a personal name derived from Sanskrit bālacandra ‘crescent moon’ (from bāla ‘child’ + candra ‘moon’) + the Tamil-Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix -n. — Note: Since South Indians traditionally do not have hereditary surnames, this name was in most cases registered as such only after immigration of its bearers to the US.

Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd edition, © Oxford University Press, 2022.

How common is the last name Balachandran in the United States?

Based on the Decennial U.S. Census data, the popularity of the surname Balachandran in the United States has increased noticeably from 2000 to 2010. In 2000, it was ranked as the 86,657th most common surname, with around 200 people bearing it. By 2010, the rank improved to 53,072 and the count nearly doubled to 390. This signifies a significant change of roughly 39 percent in rank and an impressive growth of 95 percent in the count.

	2000	2010	Change
Rank	#86,657	#53,072	38.76%
Count	200	390	95%
Proportion per 100k	0.07	0.13	85.71%

Race and Ethnicity of people with the last name Balachandran

The Decennial U.S. Census also provides insights into the ethnicity associated with the surname Balachandran. In 2000, about 94 percent of individuals with this surname identified their ethnicity as Asian/Pacific Islander. However, by 2010, this proportion decreased slightly to around 90 percent. During the same period, there was a small emergence of those identifying with two or more races, going from zero to 2.82 percent. The proportion of those identifying as White also rose from 3.5 percent in 2000 to almost 5 percent in 2010. The numbers remained static for Hispanic, Black, and American Indian and Alaskan Native ethnicities over the decade.

	2000	2010	Change
Asian/Pacific Islander	94%	90.26%	-3.98%
White	3.5%	4.87%	39.14%
Two or More Races	0%	2.82%	0%
Hispanic	0%	0%	0%
Black	0%	0%	0%
American Indian and Alaskan Native	0%	0%	0%