Cán
given name · Latin script
Meaning: handle; grip; staff; lever (especially of a tool)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Cán is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 138K
- SESweden1 in 14K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 105 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Can in VN Vietnam, US United States, CN China.
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)
handle; grip; staff; lever (especially of a tool)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cán 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #196 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | Can | 105 |
| US United States | — | 2,408 | 1 in 138K | 1.8K | Can | 74 |
| SE Sweden | — | 748 | 1 in 14K | 748 | — | 1 |
| PL Poland | — | 240 | 1 in 160K | 234 | — | — |
| CN China | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 5.8M | — | Can | 6 |
| DK Denmark | — | 160 | 1 in 37K | 187 | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | 134 | 1 in 42K | 291 | — | 1 |
| AL Albania | — | 53 | 1 in 58K | 53 | — | — |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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)
Cán 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 Vietnamese, Húy của Lý Cao Tông; chữ húy nhà Lý bị cấm viết năm 1304.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In Vietnamese, Hán-Việt; tên chúa Trịnh, cùng bộ mộc.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 嬠
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bnt-pro, scatter; fragment
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
In tyz, spotted; brindled
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Zheng Huanb. 776not in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 33158
- Liu Huanb. 1400not in their usual namepolitician
- Xiao Huannot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 171701
- Dou Huannot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 194184
- Li Huannot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 189253
- Zhang Huannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 259397
- Cai Huannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 296269
- Liu Huannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 265604
- Zeng Huannot in their usual nameMing dynasty person CBDB = 318506
- Qi Huannot in their usual nameTang dynasty person CBDB = 31680
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cán mean, and where does it come from?
- handle; grip; staff; lever (especially of a tool) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Cán a male or female name?
- Cán 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.
- In which country does Cán have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.8 thousand people named Cán in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled can.
- How common is the name Cán?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,408 people named Cán in 2020, about 1 in 138 thousand residents.
- How common is Cán compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Cán is the 196th most common given name of 73,918 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cán?
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/c%C3%A1nThe 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, “Cán” — the 196th most common given name in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.