Payén

surname · Latin script

Payén is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English payen, from Anglo-Norman paien, paen, from Latin pāgānus.

rarermore common
  • KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 13K(measured from records)
  • BEBelgium1 in 20K
  • USUnited States1 in 531K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

627 people, 2010

Sources
69 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)

St. Kitts & Nevis

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Payen in US United States, AR Argentina, ES Spain.

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)

Derivation of Payén: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Payén
  1. Middle Englishpayen(measured from records)
  2. Anglo-Normanpaien(measured from records)
  3. Latinpāgānus(measured from records)

From Middle English payen, from Anglo-Norman paien, paen, from Latin pāgānus.

Sources 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Wiktionary
  • Dictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Payén 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 Payén is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States6271 in 531K824Payen69
BE Belgium5951 in 20K595—5
ES Spain181 in 2.8M18Payen5
CH Switzerland151 in 560K15—3
AR Argentina141 in 3.2M14Payen14
KN St. Kitts & Nevis41 in 13K4——

627 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); St Kitts & Nevis — Register of Electors 2026. 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)

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

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Ukraine

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Payen, Pay-En

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Payen

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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Payén under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Payén mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English payen, from Anglo-Norman paien, paen, from Latin pāgānus. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
In which country does Payén have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 627 people named Payén, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled payen.
Where is Payén most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Payén is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 13 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Payén?
In the United States, the national register counted 627 people named Payén in 2010, about 1 in 531 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Payén?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pay%C3%A9n

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, “Payén”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Payén parses inside a full name →