Katan

surname · Latin script

Meaning: small; cf. Klein. Vars.: Kattan, Cat(t)an

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

Katan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Syria than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ILIsrael≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SYSyria≈1 in 25K
  • SISlovenia1 in 44K

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.

Syria (inferred from the name graph)

≈790 people, est.

Sources
21 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)

Israel, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

small; cf. Klein. Vars.: Kattan, Cat(t)an.

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Katan 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 Katan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SY Syria≈790 est.≈1 in 25K—Katan6
IL Israel≈550 est.≈1 in 16K—Katan7
MY Malaysia≈340 est.≈1 in 97K—Katan8
PL Poland2621 in 146K134——
US United States2391 in 1.4M291Katan21
SI Slovenia481 in 44K48——

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Katan is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Turkish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Syria, United States, Netherlands

    Also written Katán

  • Russian surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish

    Also written Катан, Catan, Çatan, Catañ

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Ecuador, United States, Venezuela

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Katån, Katán, Kätan

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Syria, Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia

    Also written Kàtàn

  • Hebrew surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Iran, Syria

    Also written קטן, Kattan, קטון, Katon, Katen

40 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Katan 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.

  • Oran, Tlemcen, Sidi bel Abbès, Algiers, Tunis, Sousse, Fès, Tanger, Tetuán, Oujda, Maroc, Smyrna, Sarajevo, Brcko, Monastir, Yugoslavia; pequeño / small

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • small; cf. Klein. Vars.: Kattan, Cat(t)an. Kate see Catlin Dims, (of i): Czech: Krsek. (Of 2): Czech: Krsek. Kates see Cates Karslake see Carslake

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • In Finnish, first-person singular present indicative of kattaa

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Indonesian, alternative form of khitan

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Basque, inessive indefinite of ka

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)

1850190019502000Maurits Katan, b. 1897Anny Katan-Rosenberg, b. 1898Alexander Katan, b. 1899Richard Katan, b. 1917Roger Katan, b. 1931Martijn Katan, b. 1946Muhtasham Katan, b. 1955Chana Katan, b. 1958Sylvain Katan, b. 1973Yaniv Katan, b. 1981

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 32 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Katan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020291#72,089
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010239#79,598
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000204#85,297
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026134—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—134#23,619
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026128—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—128#24,057
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—48#7,884
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

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 Katan mean, and where does it come from?
small; cf. Klein. Vars.: Kattan, Cat(t)an. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
In which country does Katan have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 788 people named Katan in Syria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled katan.
How common is the name Katan?
In Poland, the national register counted 262 people named Katan in 2026, about 1 in 146 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Katan?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Katan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Katan parses inside a full name →