Jin
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) honorary surname meaning ‘gold’ or ‘metal’; (ii) ‘person living by the River Jin’, China
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jin is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CNChina≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 2K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 3.2K
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
- 371 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈910,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
China, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) honorary surname meaning ‘gold’ or ‘metal’; (ii) ‘person living by the River Jin’, China.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jin is read(measured from records)
Jin is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English37%
(i) honorary surname meaning ‘gold’ or ‘metal’; (ii) ‘person living by the River Jin’, China.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Korean21%
Chinese empire/dynasty that Koryo formed tributary ties with
as a nameKorea - A Historical and Cultural Dictionary
- Chinese15%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jin in Chinese.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jin 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 | — | ≈910,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Jin | 112 |
| MY Malaysia | #354 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Jin | 89 |
| US United States | — | 14,306 | 1 in 23K | 16K | Jin | 371 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2 | Jin | 160 |
| AU Australia | #704 | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Jin | 165 |
| SG Singapore | #396 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Jin | 116 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 9.4K | 72 | Jin | 32 |
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 2020; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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)
Jin is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Chinese from the honorary surname, Jin Tianshi of Shao Hao, a son of the legendary emperor Huang Di of the 26th century bc. The character for jin also means ‘gold’ or ‘metal’. Some later descendants of Shao Hao adopted Jin as their surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
5. Japanese: ‘ranks’ or ‘battle array’. The name is not common in Japan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the name of the Jin river. Wu Wang, the first king of the Zhou dynasty (1122-16 bc), granted the state of Tang to his third son. Since the Jin river flowed through it, the name of the state was later changed to Jin. Descendants of the third son adopted the new name of the state name as their surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the name of Jin Shang, a chief official in the state of Chu during the Zhou dynasty (1122-221 bc). Some of his descendants adopted this surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Li Xianb. 653not in their usual nameTang Dynasty crown prince
- Patrick Tse Yinb. 1936CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actor (1936–2026)
- Ha Jinb. 1956CNauthor and poet
- Jin Matsubarab. 1956JPJapanese politician
- Lee Min Jinb. 1968KRAmerican writer
- Ryu Jinb. 1972KRSouth Korean actor
- Jin Katagirib. 1973JPJapanese actor and artist
- Lee Jinb. 1980KRSouth Korean singer and actress
- Ma Jinb. 1988CNChinese badminton player
- Jin Hab. 1994USAmerican actor
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 78 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.4K | #1,953 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 6.9K | #1,953 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 72 | #9,616 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 56 | — |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 41 | #13,268 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 11 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 9 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2014 | 5 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 2 | #1,520 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2023 | 1 | #2,333 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Jin mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) honorary surname meaning ‘gold’ or ‘metal’; (ii) ‘person living by the River Jin’, China. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Jin?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Jin?
- In the etymology graph, Djinn is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Jin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,306 people named Jin in 2020, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
- How common is Jin compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Jin is the 354th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
- Is Jin a male or female name?
- Jin is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Jin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 915 thousand people named Jin in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jin.
What do you want to know about Jin?
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/jinThe 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, “Jin” — the 354th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.