Jähn
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Johann/Johannes; Nebenform zu Jahn
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 3 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/jeːn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jähn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 69K
- ATAustria≈1 in 9.5K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 327 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈30,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Jahn in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria and 2 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.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Patronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Johann/Johannes; Nebenform zu Jahn. Belegt mit 618 Trägern.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Jähn 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #119 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | listed | Jahn | 199 |
| US United States | — | 4,850 | 1 in 69K | 4.8K | Jahn | 327 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,681 | 1 in 79K | 2.7K | — | 1 |
| IN India | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 499K | — | Jahn | 19 |
| AT Austria | #685 | ≈930 est. | ≈1 in 9.5K | 32 | Jahn | 67 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 524 | 1 in 20K | 525 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | — | 332 | 1 in 18K | 332 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 322 | 1 in 26K | 322 | Jahn | 37 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; the dfa-band-6 register; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Jähn is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, umgelautete Form von Jahn, patronymisch zu Johannes; 618 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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)- Fritz Jähnb. 1882German weapons officer, last position: Major General of the Wehrmacht
- Karl-Heinz Jähnb. 1932DEGerman translator
- Sigmund Jähnb. 1937DEEast German cosmonaut (1937–2019)
- Felix Jaehnb. 1994DEnot in their usual nameGerman DJ and music producer
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)Evidence
(measured from records)6 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 25 | #31,192 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 6 | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- How do you pronounce Jähn?
- A machine transcription gives /jeːn/ (IPA) for German.
- What does the name Jähn mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Johann/Johannes; Nebenform zu Jahn.
- In which country does Jähn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 30 thousand people named Jähn in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jahn.
- How common is the name Jähn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,850 people named Jähn in 2010, about 1 in 69 thousand residents.
- How common is Jähn compared with other names?
- In Germany, Jähn is the 119th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jähn?
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/j%C3%A4hnThe 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, “Jähn” — the 119th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.