Christian
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From the medieval personal name Christian, from Latin Christianus, literally ‘follower of Christ’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Christian is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Cameroon it is the 13th most common given name.
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 200(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 309
- FRFrance≈1 in 360
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #593 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 514 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 109 (inferred from the name graph)
415,787 people, 2020
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the medieval personal name Christian, from Latin Christianus, literally ‘follower of Christ’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Christian is read(measured from records)
Christian is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English30%
From the medieval personal name Christian, from Latin Christianus, literally ‘follower of Christ’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from Lat Christianus, common in Brittany; first attested Chrlstiana 1154
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A follower of Christ; derived from Latin Christianus
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Old English/German: a follower of Christ
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Christian (L Christidnus ‘follower of Christ’, L ChrTstus, Gk Khristos, a deriv. of kriein to anoint, calqued on Hebr. mashiach Messiah). This male given name was intro¬ duced into England following the Norman conquest, espe¬ cially by Bret, settlers. It was also used in the same form as a female name, and in some cases the surname may be metronymic in origin.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- Spanish21%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Christian in Spanish.
- German20%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Christian in German.
- French16%
From Latin Christianus, 'follower of Christ'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Christian 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 | #863 | 415,787 | 1 in 800 | 398K | Christian | 514 |
| PH Philippines | #46 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 561 | — | Christian | 158 |
| FR France | #44 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 360 | 406K | Christian | 450 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 109 | 21K | — | 2 |
| CM Cameroon | #13 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 382 | — | Christian | 57 |
| EC Ecuador | #109 | 54,783 | 1 in 309 | 55K | Christian | 106 |
| CH Switzerland | #93 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 200 | 58 | Christian | 141 |
| SE Sweden | — | 39,858 | 1 in 256 | 40K | Christian | 79 |
| DK Denmark | — | 37,349 | 1 in 157 | 37K | Christian | 4 |
415,787 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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INEC — civil registry names; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Christian IIb. 1481DKking of Denmark, Norway and Sweden
- Johann Christian Bachb. 1735DEGerman composer (1735–1782)
- Christian VIII of Denmarkb. 1786DKKing of Norway 1814, King of Denmark 1839-1848
- Leopold I of Belgiumb. 1790BEnot in their usual nameGerman prince who became the first King of the Belgians (1790–1865)
- Christian Xb. 1870DKKing of Denmark (1912–1947) and Iceland (1918–1944)
- Haakon VII of Norwayb. 1872NOnot in their usual nameKing of Norway from 1905 to 1957 (1872–1957)
- Christian B. Anfinsenb. 1916USAmerican biochemist (1916–1995)
- Jens Christian Skoub. 1918DKDanish chemist (1918-2018)
- Andrew Mountbatten-Windsorb. 1960GBnot in their usual namethird child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born 1960)
- Frederik Xb. 1968FRnot in their usual nameKing of Denmark since 2024
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)
Attested in 151 sources across 77 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 406K | #653 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 398K | #111 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 55K | #35 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 40K | #102 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 37K | #8 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 21K | #156 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 20K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 17K | #111 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3.6K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2023 | 151 | #47 |
Reference works 9
- 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)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Christian mean, and where does it come from?
- From the medieval personal name Christian, from Latin Christianus, literally ‘follower of Christ’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Christian a male or female name?
- Christian 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.
- What are other forms of the name Christian?
- In the etymology graph, Cristian, Kristen and Christelle are forms of the same name in other languages; Christer is a recorded short or pet form.
- In which country does Christian have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 416 thousand people named Christian, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled christian.
- How common is the name Christian?
- In the United States, the national register counted 415,787 people named Christian in 2020, about 1 in 800 residents.
- How common is Christian compared with other names?
- In the United States, Christian is the 863rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Christian?
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/christianThe 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, “Christian” — the 863rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.