Shankar (name)

Sankar or Shankar is a Sanskrit word meaning "beneficent" or "giver of bliss". Shankar or Sankar is also the name of Hindu god, Lord Shiva. The south Indian version of Shankara is sometimes written as "Sankara".

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 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

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
• S. Shankar, Tamil film director
• Uday Shankar (1900–1977), classical dancer

Fictional

• Shankar Roy Chowdhury, protagonist of the Chander Pahar franchise