Cannon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) Medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a canon in piety or solemnity; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Canáin, ‘descendant of Canán’, from cana ‘wolf cub’; or (iii) from Irish and Manx Gaelic M
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kænən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cannon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Liberia it is the 3rd most common surname.
- LRLiberia≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 3K
- USUnited States1 in 4.7K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 546 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈210,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Liberia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Irish GaelicÓ(measured from records)
- Irishand(measured from records)
(i) Medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a canon in piety or solemnity; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Canáin, ‘descendant of Canán’, from cana ‘wolf cub’; or (iii) from Irish and Manx Gaelic Mac Canannáin.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cannon 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | — | Cannon | 15 |
| US United States | #396 | 71,085 | 1 in 4.7K | 71K | Cannon | 546 |
| GB United Kingdom | #481 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Cannon | 261 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Cannon | 17 |
| IT Italy | #763 | ≈7,100 est. | ≈1 in 8.8K | — | Cannon | 22 |
| LR Liberia | #3 | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Cannon | 4 |
| IE Ireland | #269 | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Cannon | 89 |
| IS Iceland | #594 | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Cannon | 8 |
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. 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)
Cannon is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from OE canonic, later ME canun/ONFr canonie/chanoine, ‘clergyman living with others in a clergy house’; first attested Aluric se Canonica 11th OEByn (D)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, A complete assembly, consisting of an artillery tube and a breech mechanism, firing mechanism or base cap, which is a component of a gun, howitzer or mortar, which may include muzzle appendages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, dugba
as a wordVocabulary of the Mende Language
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)
- Joseph Gurney Cannonb. 1836USAmerican politician (1836–1926)
- Annie Jump Cannonb. 1863USAmerican astronomer (1863-1941)
- Walter Bradford Cannonb. 1871USAmerican physiologist (1871-1945)
- J.D. Cannonb. 1922USAmerican actor (1922-2005)
- Dyan Cannonb. 1937USAmerican film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer (born 1937)
- Chris Cannonb. 1950USAmerican politician (1950–2024)
- Danny Cannonb. 1968GBEnglish film director
- Kay Cannonb. 1974USAmerican screenwriter, producer, director, and actress
- Lezley Zenb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Nicholas Scott "Nick" Cannonb. 1980USAmerican rapper, actor, and comedian (born 1980)
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 37 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 71K | #466 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 68K | #480 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 68K | #436 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Cannon mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a canon in piety or solemnity; (ii) from Irish Gaelic Ó Canáin, ‘descendant of Canán’, from cana ‘wolf cub’; or (iii) from Irish and Manx Gaelic M… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Cannon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 210 thousand people named Cannon in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cannon.
- How common is the name Cannon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 71,085 people named Cannon in 2010, about 1 in 4.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Cannon compared with other names?
- In Liberia, Cannon is the 3rd most common surname of 10,200 surnames recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Cannon?
- A machine transcription gives /kænən/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Cannon?
- In the etymology graph, Kannon is a form of the same name in other languages.
What do you want to know about Cannon?
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/cannonThe 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, “Cannon” — the 3rd most common surname in Liberia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.