San
loc · Latin script
Meaning: financial, temporal-savings scheme; the participants periodically contribute a quota to a communal pot that is given to one member, based on his/her turn amongst all the others
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
San is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Myanmar (Burma) than in any other country.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 21K
- USUnited States1 in 47Kas Sal
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 San 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.
- Myanmar (Burma) (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 423 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 433 (inferred from the name graph)
≈130,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Myanmar (Burma), est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Santu in IN India, BD Bangladesh, Sal in US United States and Sañ in MM Myanmar (Burma).
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)
financial, temporal-savings scheme; the participants periodically contribute a quota to a communal pot that is given to one member, based on his/her turn amongst all the others
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
San 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MM Myanmar (Burma) | — | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 433 | — | Sañ | 91 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | listed | San | 131 |
| US United States | — | 7,124as Sal | 1 in 47K | 6.8K | Sal | 423 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | San | 86 |
| BD Bangladesh | — | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Santu | 26 |
| GT Guatemala | — | ≈830 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | San | 20 |
| FI Finland | — | 535as Sani | 1 in 10K | 530 | — | 5 |
| SE Sweden | — | 264 | 1 in 39K | 264 | — | 22 |
| IN India | #930 | — | — | 2.4K | Santu | 120 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)
San 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 Italian, do lat. sanctus; forma que precede nomes de santos
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Agni (V); Indra (V); GaneSa (N); Krsna (0); Siva
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In German, meaning uncertain
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Akan, 11, adv. quietly, pleasantly; ne ba bo ue bo s., her child rests peaceftdly on her bosom
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
In cdo, Read aching; used in the Paik、 J)xg for the coll. ； sang : the sky clear-
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
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 Bunyanb. 1628GBnot in their usual nameEnglish Christian writer and preacher (1628-1688)
- John Adamsb. 1735USnot in their usual nameFounding Father, U.S. president from 1797 to 1801 (1735–1826)
- John Quincy Adamsb. 1767USnot in their usual namePresident of the United States from 1825 to 1829
- John Tylerb. 1790USnot in their usual namepresident of the United States from 1841 to 1845
- John Updikeb. 1932USnot in their usual nameAmerican novelist, poet (1932–2009)
- John McCainb. 1936USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (1936–2018)
- Thomas J. Sargentb. 1943USnot in their usual nameAmerican economist (born 1943)
- John Grishamb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (born 1955)
- John Robertsb. 1955USnot in their usual nameChief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 2005
- John Cusackb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, producer, and screenwriter (born 1966)
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 76 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2K | #4,316 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 2.2K | #4,316 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 264 | #4,292 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 113 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 93 | #3,067 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 74 | #3,775 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 23 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 22 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 5 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2015 | 5 | — |
| IN India | naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) | 2013 | 2 | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 San mean, and where does it come from?
- financial, temporal-savings scheme; the participants periodically contribute a quota to a communal pot that is given to one member, based on his/her turn amongst all the others Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce San?
- A machine transcription gives /sæn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does San have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 131 thousand people named San in Myanmar (Burma), more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sañ.
- How common is the name San?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 264 people named San, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
- How common is San compared with other names?
- In India, San is the 930th most common given name of 3,760,348 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about San?
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/sanThe 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, “San” — the 930th most common given name in India. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.