Allan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin and unknown meaning
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ælən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Allan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 35th most common given name.
- DKDenmark1 in 365(measured from records)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 486
- SESweden1 in 554
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #813 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 562 (measured from records)
- 1 in 365 (inferred from the name graph)
≈390,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin and unknown meaning.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Allan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈390,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Allan | 65 |
| PH Philippines | #62 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 486 | — | Allan | 176 |
| US United States | #400 | 69,671 | 1 in 4.8K | 70K | Allan | 562 |
| BR Brazil | — | 46,920 | 1 in 4.5K | 47K | — | 10 |
| GB United Kingdom | #251 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Allan | 300 |
| SE Sweden | #419 | 18,422 | 1 in 554 | 18K | Allan | 87 |
| DK Denmark | #35 | 16,095 | 1 in 365 | 16K | Allan | 182 |
| FI Finland | — | 10,012 | 1 in 556 | 20K | Allan | 38 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 8,336 | 1 in 612 | 8.3K | — | 5 |
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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)
Allan 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.
In English, From Alan/Ailean, a Breton and Gaelic personal name meaning ‘rock’ or ‘rocky’; used patronymically. Normanised fiz Alan from 1296.
as a nameScottish Surnames
Variant spelling of pAlan, used mainly in Scotland and North America.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A male given name from the Celtic languages, a less common spelling of Alan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Allan är ett engelskt namn av keltiskt ursprung med oviss betydelse. Det har före slagits vara en bildning till ett ord med betydelsen ’klippa’. Kända namnbärare är den amerikanske författaren Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) och den svenske skådespelaren Allan Edwall (1924–1997). I den rikssvenska almanackan 22 april och i den finlandssvenska 7 april.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Scottish and English: variant spelling of ALAN .
as a word
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)
- Edgar Allan Poeb. 1809USAmerican writer and literary critic (1809–1849)
- Allan Octavian Humeb. 1829GBBritish Ornithologist and Founder of the Indian National Congress (1829–1912)
- Allan Rex Sandageb. 1926USAmerican astronomer (1926-2010)
- Arno Allan Penziasb. 1933USGerman-born American physicist
- Woody Allenb. 1935USnot in their usual nameAmerican filmmaker, actor and comedian (born 1935)
- Lou Reedb. 1942USnot in their usual nameAmerican rock musician (1942–2013)
- Steven Spielbergb. 1946USnot in their usual nameAmerican filmmaker (born 1946)
- Allan Simonsenb. 1952DKDanish footballer
- Howard Sternb. 1954USnot in their usual nameAmerican radio and television personality (born 1954)
- Eric Allan Kramerb. 1962USAmerican actor
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)
Attested in 121 sources across 59 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 70K | #730 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 47K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 47K | #590 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 31K | #1,081 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 20K | #113 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 18K | #237 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 16K | #44 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 10K | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 8.3K | #77 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 3.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 2.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 338 | #590 |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Allan mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin and unknown meaning. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Allan?
- A machine transcription gives /ælən/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Allan?
- In the etymology graph, Alan, Alain and Alen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Allan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 390 thousand people named Allan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled allan.
- Where is Allan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Allan is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 365 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- Is Allan a male or female name?
- Allan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How common is the name Allan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 69,671 people named Allan in 2020, about 1 in 4.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Allan compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Allan is the 35th most common given name of 23,174 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Allan?
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/allanThe 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, “Allan” — the 35th most common given name in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.