Guan

surname · Latin script

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 23 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/ɡwɑn/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary

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Guan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From American Spanish, from Kuna kwama. Guan is also written กวิน in Thai.

  • TWTaiwan≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CNChina≈1 in 3.5K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 4K

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 Guan 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)

≈400,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
494 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Taiwan, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Guan in other scripts: Latin and Thai

(measured from records)
GavinGuan in Latin(measured from records)
กวินGuan in Thai(measured from records)

8 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Gavin in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 3 more.

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 Guan

  • English:/ɡwɑn/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • Malay:/ɡuan/(machine-generated) model-generated

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)
Derivation of Guan: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Guan
  1. AmericanSpanish(measured from records)
  2. Kunakwama(measured from records)

From American Spanish, from Kuna kwama.

Cited for this meaning 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Guan 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.

Where Guan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈400,000 est.≈1 in 3.5K—Guan144
US United States—168,745as Gavin1 in 2K168KGavin494
GB United Kingdom#247≈39,000 est.≈1 in 1.8K6Gavin335
ZA South Africa#217≈32,000 est.≈1 in 2K—Gavin134
AU Australia#294≈20,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K82Gavin262
TW Taiwan—≈7,100 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Gavin76
IE Ireland#177≈2,500 est.≈1 in 2.2K26Gavin140
GY Guyana—771as Gavin1 in 973771—5
NL Netherlands—421 in 411K399Guan76

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; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Guan is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Guān

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, China, United States, Canada

    Also written Guàn, Guǎn

57 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
1950196019701980Mo Yan, b. 1955Ke Huy Quan, b. 1971Michelle Kwan, b. 1980
  • Mo Yanb. 1955CNnot in their usual nameChinese novelist and screenwriter
  • Ke Huy Quanb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and stunt choreographer
  • Michelle Kwanb. 1980USnot in their usual nameAmerican figure skater and diplomat

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)
FormalDear Mr Guan,
InformalHi Guan,

Evidence

(measured from records)

44 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 23 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Guan mean, and where does it come from?
From American Spanish, from Kuna kwama. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
How do you pronounce Guan?
It depends on the language: in English /ɡwɑn/ (Wiktionary); in Malay /ɡuan/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people named Guan?
Mondonomo estimates about 403 thousand people named Guan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled guan. After it come United States, United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Guan?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 42 people named Guan, about 1 in 411 thousand residents.
How common is Guan compared with other names?
In Ireland, Guan is the 177th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Guan?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/guan

The 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, “Guan” — the 177th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Guan parses inside a full name →