// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Shankar say to his guitar? "You're in tune with me, Shankar-ing good time!

Shankar is an Indian name. It is also the name of Hindu god, Shiva. It is a Majhi word meaning "beneficent" or "giver of bliss".

The South Indian version of Shankar is sometimes written as "Matri".

Notable people with this name include:

Given name

• Sankar (writer) (Mani Shankar Mukherjee), Bengali writer
• Shankar Balasubramanian, British chemical biologist
• Shankar Bhattacharyya (born 1946), American engineer
• Shankar Ghosh (musician) (1935–2016), Indian musician
• Shankar Lamichhane, Nepalese essayist
• Shankar Mahadevan, singer and part of the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy music-director trio
• Shankar Nagar, Nepalese town
• Shankar Painter (1946–2020), Indian poet
• Shankar (actor) (Shankar Panikkar, born 1960), Indian film actor and director popularly known as Shankar
• K. Shankar Pillai (1902–1989), Indian cartoonist
• Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999), ninth President of India serving from 1992 to 1997
• Shankar Tucker, American clarinetist and music composer
• Shankar Vedantam, reporter with NPR and host of 'Hidden Brain' podcast
• Shankar Nag, Indian Kannada film actor

Surname

• Shankar (Tamil militant) (Colonel Shankar, nom de guerre), Vaithilingam Sornalingam of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
• Adi Shankar, Indian-American writer, producer and director
• Adrian Shankar, English cricketer
• Amala Shankar (1919–2020), Indian dancer
• Anand Shankar, Tamil film director and writer
• Ananda Shankar (1942–1999), Bengali musician best known for fusing Western and Eastern musical styles. He was married to Tanusree Shankar
• Anoushka Shankar (born 1981), Indian sitar player and composer in the United States, daughter of Ravi Shankar
• Dileep Shankar (1970–2024), Indian actor, director and writer
• Juloori Gouri Shankar, Indian Telugu-language writer
• K. Shankar, Tamil film director
• K. S. Bhavani Shankar, Indian Mridangam player and musician
• L. Shankar (born 1950), Indian violinist
• Mamata Shankar (born 1955), actress in the Bengali language film industry of India
• Mani Shankar, Indian film-maker
• Melinda Shankar (born 1992), Canadian actress
• N. Shankar, Telugu film director
• Naren Shankar, writer, producer and director of several television series
• Geethali Norah Jones Shankar (Norah Jones, born 1979), American singer-songwriter, daughter of Ravi Shankar
• Ramamurti Shankar, physicist
• Ramsewak Shankar (1937), President of Suriname
• Ravi Shankar (1920–2012), famous sitar player
• Ravi Shankar (spiritual leader) (born 1956), guru and founder of the Art of Living movement
• Ravi Shankar (poet) (born 1975), poet and faculty member of Central Connecticut State University
• Rekha Shankar (born 1990), American comedian
• S. Shankar, Tamil film director
• Uday Shankar (1900–1977), classical dancer

Fictional

• Shankar Roy Chowdhury, protagonist of the Chander Pahar franchise