Nguyen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ŋwiəɛŋ˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nguyen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 9(inferred from the name graph)
- AOAngola≈1 in 132
- AUAustralia≈1 in 500
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)
- #43 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 570 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 9 (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Nguyen, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nguyen 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 | #1 | ≈11,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 9 | 39M | Nguyen | 350 |
| CN China | — | ≈1,300,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Nguyen | 34 |
| US United States | #33 | 437,645 | 1 in 760 | 531K | Nguyen | 570 |
| AO Angola | #3 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 132 | — | Nguyen | 9 |
| GB United Kingdom | #93 | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | 5 | Nguyen | 210 |
| AU Australia | #11 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 500 | 3 | Nguyen | 308 |
| NO Norway | — | 15,162 | 1 in 361 | 15K | Nguyen | 83 |
| SV El Salvador | #111 | ≈9,700 est. | ≈1 in 666 | — | Nguyen | 12 |
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: The article discusses the popularity of the surname 'Nguyễn' among Vietnamese people, published by Vietcetera.; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Nguyen 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 English, Vietnamese surname of unknown origin
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Gia Longb. 1762VNnot in their usual namefounder and 1st emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam (r. 1802-04)
- Ho Chi Minhb. 1890VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese communist leader, founder of North Vietnam (1890–1969)
- Thích Quảng Đứcb. 1897VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese monk who self-immolated in 1963
- Nguyễn Văn Linhb. 1915VNGeneral secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1915–1998)
- Đỗ Mườib. 1917VNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1917–2018)
- Nguyễn Văn Thiệub. 1923USpresident of South Vietnam from 1965–75
- Nguyễn Minh Triếtb. 1942VNSixth President of Vietnam (2006-2011)
- Nguyễn Phú Trọngb. 1944VNGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (top leader) from 2011 to 2024
- Nguyễn Tấn Dũngb. 1949VNPrime Minister of Vietnam
- Nguyễn Xuân Phúcb. 1954VNformer President of Vietnam
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)
Attested in 65 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 531K | #29 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 438K | #38 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 310K | #57 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 15K | #38 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 7.6K | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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)
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 Nguyen?
- A machine transcription gives /ŋwiəɛŋ˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- What does the name Nguyen mean, and where does it come from?
- unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Nguyen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 million people named Nguyen in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nguyen.
- How common is the name Nguyen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 437,645 people named Nguyen in 2010, about 1 in 760 residents.
- How common is Nguyen compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Nguyen is the most common surname of 62,915 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nguyen?
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/nguyenThe 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, “Nguyen” — the most common surname in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.