Wån
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Wån is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Middle English wan, wanne (“grey, leaden; pale grey, ashen; blue-black (like a bruise); dim, faint; dark, gloomy”), from Old English wann (“dark, dusky”), from Proto-Germanic *wannaz (“dark, swar.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 129(inferred from the name graph)
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 2.1K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 2.4K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 168 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 129 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Wan in MY Malaysia, ID Indonesia, US United States and 4 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)
- Middle Englishwan“grey(measured from records)
- Old Englishwann“dark“dark, dusky”(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*wannaz“dark“dark, swart”(measured from records)
From Middle English wan, wanne (“grey, leaden; pale grey, ashen; blue-black (like a bruise); dim, faint; dark, gloomy”), from Old English wann (“dark, dusky”), from Proto-Germanic *wannaz (“dark, swart”), of uncertain origin. Cognate with Old Frisian wann, wonn (“dark”).
Sources 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
Attested across 29 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wån 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #14 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 129 | 1.1K | Wan | 168 |
| CN China | — | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Wan | 32 |
| ID Indonesia | #810 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Wan | 124 |
| HK Hong Kong | #453 | ≈8,200 est. | ≈1 in 879 | — | Wan | 39 |
| SG Singapore | #329 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Wan | 97 |
| US United States | — | 2,599 | 1 in 128K | 7.4K | Wan | 133 |
| BN Brunei | #16 | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 713 | — | Wan | 20 |
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: data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wån mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle English wan, wanne (“grey, leaden; pale grey, ashen; blue-black (like a bruise); dim, faint; dark, gloomy”), from Old English wann (“dark, dusky”), from Proto-Germanic *wannaz (“dark, swar… Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- In which country does Wån have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 253 thousand people named Wån in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wan.
- How common is the name Wån?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,599 people named Wån in 2020, about 1 in 128 thousand residents.
- How common is Wån compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Wån is the 14th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wån?
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/w%C3%A5nThe 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, “Wån” — the 14th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.