Swàn

given name · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Swàn is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Middle English swan, from Old English swan, from Proto-West Germanic *swan, from Proto-Germanic *swanaz (“swan”, literally “the singing bird”), from Proto-Indo-European *swonh₂-/*swenh₂- (“to sin.

rarermore common
  • KRSouth Korea≈1 in 9.8Kas 수완(inferred from the name graph)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 262K
  • USUnited States1 in 692K

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 Swàn 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.

South Korea (inferred from the name graph)

≈5,300 named 수완, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
53 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 262K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SwànLatin(measured from records)
수완Hangul(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Swan in US United States and 수완 in KR South Korea.

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 Swàn: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Swàn
  1. Middle Englishswan(measured from records)
  2. Old Englishswan(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*swan(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*swanaz“swan”(measured from records)
  5. Proto-Indo-European*swonh₂-/*swenh₂-“to sing“to sing, make sound”(measured from records)

From Middle English swan, from Old English swan, from Proto-West Germanic *swan, from Proto-Germanic *swanaz (“swan”, literally “the singing bird”), from Proto-Indo-European *swonh₂-/*swenh₂- (“to sing, make sound”). Cognate with West Frisian swan, Low German Swaan, swan, Dutch zwaan, German Schwan, Danish svane, Norwegian svane, Swedish svan. Related also to Old English ġeswin (“melody, song”), Old English swinsian (“to make melody”). Further cognates include (possibly) Russian звон (zvon, “ring, chime”); Latin sonus (“sound”), Sanskrit स्वन् (svan, “sound”). Doublet of sound.

Sources 5

  • A dictionary of surnames
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Swàn 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 Swàn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
KR South Korea≈5,300 est.≈1 in 9.8K—수완30
US United States4811 in 692K23KSwan53
NL Netherlands661 in 262K77——
BR Brazil351 in 6M71——
SE Sweden24as Suwan1 in 425K119—1
DK Denmark11as Suwan1 in 534K21——

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Swàn 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 Swàn mean, and where does it come from?
From Middle English swan, from Old English swan, from Proto-West Germanic *swan, from Proto-Germanic *swanaz (“swan”, literally “the singing bird”), from Proto-Indo-European *swonh₂-/*swenh₂- (“to sin… Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 3 other sources.
Is Swàn a male or female name?
Swàn is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Swàn have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 5.3 thousand people named 수완 in South Korea, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Swàn most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Swàn is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 262 thousand people — even though South Korea holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Swàn?
In the United States, the national register counted 481 people named Swàn in 2020, about 1 in 692 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Swàn?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sw%C3%A0n

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, “Swàn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Swàn parses inside a full name →