Sean
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Irish form of John; earlier form Eoin from Latin Johannes (Irish first names)
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 56 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/ʃɔːn/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Sean is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 377,127 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. In Ireland it is the 23rd most common given name. Sean is also written שון in Hebrew, 세언 in Korean (Hangul) and Сеан in Cyrillic.
- IEIreland≈1 in 390(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 700
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 710
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Sean itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #251 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 646 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 389 (inferred from the name graph)
377,127 people, 2020
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Sean in other scripts: Hebrew, Korean (Hangul) and Cyrillic
(measured from records)Locally spelled Shaun in ZA South Africa.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
How to pronounce Sean
- English:/ʃɔːn/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Irish form of John; earlier form Eoin from Latin Johannes.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Irish first names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Sean, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Sean counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #117 | 377,127 | 1 in 882 | 375K | Sean | 646 |
| GB United Kingdom | #74 | ≈97,000 est. | ≈1 in 712 | 102 | Sean | 363 |
| CA Canada | #119 | ≈46,000 est. | ≈1 in 900 | 11 | Sean | 336 |
| ZA South Africa | #48 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Shaun | 161 |
| AU Australia | #85 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 704 | 122 | Sean | 324 |
| IE Ireland | #23 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 389 | 255 | Sean | 188 |
| NZ New Zealand | #76 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 883 | 10 | Sean | 163 |
377,127 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Sean is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Irish Gaelic form of John, pronounced ‘shawn’. It was derived in the early Middle Ages from Anglo-Norman Jehan. The name has always been common in Ireland, but is now also being increasingly chosen (usually without the accent) by parents who have no Irish connections. One influence on its popularity has been the actor Sean Connery (born 1930), of James Bond fame.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Dated form of seine.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Sean är den iriska formen av → John. En känd namnbärare är den brittiske skådespelaren Sean Connery (1930–2020).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In Irish, Forme irlandaise de Jean; origine hébraïque, signifie « Dieu a fait grâce ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In English, Irlandais, forme de John; hébreu Yôḥanan « Dieu fait grâce ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Seán MacBrideb. 1904FRIrish politician and human rights activist (1904-1988)
- Robert Sean Leonardb. 1969USAmerican actor
- Sean Combsb. 1969USAmerican rapper and producer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)105 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 56 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Sean?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sean?
- In English /ʃɔːn/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Sean mean, and where does it come from?
- Irish form of John; earlier form Eoin from Latin Johannes. Recorded by Irish first names.
- Which countries have the most people named Sean?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 377 thousand people named Sean, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sean. After it come United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Is Sean a male or female name?
- Sean is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 2024), Norway (SSB) and Denmark (Danmarks Statistik), among others.
- How common is the name Sean?
- In the United States, the national register counted 377,127 people named Sean in 2020, about 1 in 882 residents.
- How common is Sean compared with other names?
- In the United States, Sean is the 117th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sean?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/seanThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Sean” — ranked 124th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.