Glen
loc · Latin script
Meaning: (i) person who lives in a glen or from various Scottish places; (ii) person from Glen, Leicestershire, ‘valley’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Glen is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 1.9K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.5K
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 Glen itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 545 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈490,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Glenn in KP North Korea, PH Philippines.
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)
(i) person who lives in a glen or from various Scottish places; (ii) person from Glen, Leicestershire, ‘valley’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Glen 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 | — | ≈490,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Glen | 29 |
| US United States | — | 145,760as Glenn | 1 in 2.3K | 145K | Glen | 545 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | 12 | Glen | 266 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Glenn | 121 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 3 | Glen | 256 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 81 | Glen | 265 |
| KP North Korea | #204 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Glenn | 4 |
| SE Sweden | — | 5,510as Glenn | 1 in 1.9K | 5.5K | — | 49 |
| NO Norway | — | 3,770as Glenn | 1 in 1.4K | 10K | — | 39 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 19 | Glen | 128 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 361 | 1 in 14K | 361 | — | — |
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; NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); 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)
Glen 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 the lands of Glen in Traquair (Peebles); first attested Colban del Glen 1328 Black
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from Glen (Leics); first attested Gregory Glen 1230 Cur (Suffolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Cornish; from the valley or glen; boy/girl
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
From the Gaelic word gleann ‘valley’, in some cases perhaps representing a transferred use of the surname derived from this word. In recent years it has been used far beyond Scotland as a given IOI name. There has been some confusion with the Welsh name Glyn, which has the same meaning. Variant: Glenn.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
habitational name from a place in Leicestershire, so named from an Old English word glean ‘glen’, ‘valley’ (from Celtic glinn).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- John Glenb. 1932GBEnglish film director and editor
- Glen Campbellb. 1936USAmerican musician (1936–2017)
- Captain Beefheartb. 1941USnot in their usual nameAmerican musician and painter (1941-2010)
- Dee Dee Ramoneb. 1951USnot in their usual nameAmerican bassist (1951–2002)
- Glen Matlockb. 1956GBBritish bassist
- Georgie Glenb. 1956GBBritish actress
- Iain Glenb. 1961GBScottish actor
- Glen Morganb. 1961USAmerican television producer, writer, and director (born 1961)
- Glen Mossb. 1983NZNew Zealand footballer
- Glen Powellb. 1988USAmerican 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 96 sources across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 72K | #702 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 550 | #2,361 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 446 | #702 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 397 | #3,245 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 361 | #1,033 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 226 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 207 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 1986 | 81 | #91 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 74 | — |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 1989 | 42 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1997 | 19 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 12 | #307 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Glen mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) person who lives in a glen or from various Scottish places; (ii) person from Glen, Leicestershire, ‘valley’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Glen?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 361 people named Glen, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Glen compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Glen is the 204th most common given name of 2,746 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Glen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 491 thousand people named Glen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled glen.
What do you want to know about Glen?
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/glenThe 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, “Glen” — the 204th most common given name in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.