Cogan
loc · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘Person from Cogan’ near Cardiff, perhaps meaning ‘bowl, depression’; (ii) a different form of Coogan; (iii) from a Ukrainian variant of Cohen
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: St Kitts & Nevis, 2026
Cogan is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- KNSt. Kitts & Nevis1 in 54K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 85K
- USUnited States1 in 92K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 333 (measured from records)
- 1 in 54K (inferred from the name graph)
3,631 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
St. Kitts & Nevis
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) ‘Person from Cogan’ near Cardiff, perhaps meaning ‘bowl, depression’; (ii) a different form of Coogan; (iii) from a Ukrainian variant of Cohen.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where the surname Cogan is found
(measured from records)Cogan 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 3,631 | 1 in 92K | 3.6K | Cogan | 333 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Cogan | 135 |
| FR France | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 184K | 48 | — | 2 |
| AR Argentina | 54 | 1 in 842K | 54 | — | — |
| UY Uruguay | 40 | 1 in 85K | 40 | — | — |
| KN St. Kitts & Nevis | 1 | 1 in 54K | 1 | — | — |
3,631 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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Cogan 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 English, from Cogan, Glamorgan; in Ireland also from Ir Mac Cogadhain ‘son of the hound of war’; first attested William de Cogan 1185 P (Glam)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, from the Cardiff-area place-name Cogan; linked to Milo de Cogan and the parish and manor near Cardiff
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In English, from the place-name Cogan; earliest citation 1538: John Cogan.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
Slavic term for Kohen or Cohen.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, from Cogan, Glamorgan
as a nameWelsh Surnames
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)- Henri Coganb. 1914FRwrestler, stuntman, actor (1914-2003)
- Alma Coganb. 1932GBBritish pop singer (1932–1966)
- Dan Coganb. 1950USAmerican film producer and director
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)28 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cogan mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘Person from Cogan’ near Cardiff, perhaps meaning ‘bowl, depression’; (ii) a different form of Coogan; (iii) from a Ukrainian variant of Cohen. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Cogan?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.6 thousand people named Cogan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cogan. After it come United Kingdom, France, Argentina and Uruguay; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Cogan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cogan is densest in St. Kitts & Nevis — about 1 in 54 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Cogan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,631 people named Cogan in 2010, about 1 in 92 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cogan?
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/coganThe 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, “Cogan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.