Khan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman”
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kɑːn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Khan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Pakistan than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- PKPakistan≈1 in 21(inferred from the name graph)
- BDBangladesh≈1 in 34
- AEUnited Arab Emirates≈1 in 49
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.
- Pakistan (inferred from the name graph)
- #54 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 538 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 21 (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Pakistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman”
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Khan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PK Pakistan | #1 | ≈11,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 21 | listed | Khan | 245 |
| BD Bangladesh | #7 | ≈4,800,000 est. | ≈1 in 34 | listed | Khan | 220 |
| IN India | #14 | 1,485,348 | 1 in 893 | 1.5M | Khan | 333 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #1 | ≈510,000 est. | ≈1 in 67 | — | Khan | 178 |
| AF Afghanistan | #16 | ≈440,000 est. | ≈1 in 84 | — | Khan | 66 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #1 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 49 | — | Khan | 207 |
| BH Bahrain | #1 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 59 | — | Khan | 78 |
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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls. 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)
Khan 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.
from a personal name or status name based on Turkish khan ‘ruler’, ‘nobleman’. This was originally a hereditary title among Tartar and Mongolian tribesmen (in particular Genghis Khan, 1162-1227), but is now very widely used throughout the Muslim world as a personal name. In Iran and parts of the Indian subcontinent it is used as an honorific title after a person’s personal name.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A ruler over various Turkic and Mongol peoples in the Middle Ages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Asian title. Cen. Asian people
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Arabic, khan; ruler, lord
as a nameAfrican Muslim Names
Príncipe
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Abdur Rahman Khanb. 1840AFEmir of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901
- Muhammad Ayub Khanb. 1907PKPresident of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969
- Fazlur Khanb. 1929BDBangladeshi architect (1929–1982)
- Imran Khanb. 1952PK22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan
- Michelle Yeohb. 1962MYnot in their usual nameMalaysian actress (born 1962)
- Shah Rukh Khanb. 1965INIndian actor, producer and television personality
- Irrfan Khanb. 1967INIndian actor (1967–2020)
- Saif Ali Khanb. 1970INIndian film actor and producer
- Sadiq Khanb. 1970GBBritish politician, Mayor of London (born 1970)
- Kareena Kapoorb. 1980INnot in their usual nameIndian actress
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 93 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.5M | #15 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Khan mean, and where does it come from?
- from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman” Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Khan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 million people named Khan in Pakistan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled khan.
- How do you pronounce Khan?
- A machine transcription gives /kɑːn/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- How common is the name Khan?
- In India, the national register counted 1,485,348 people named Khan, about 1 in 893 residents.
- How common is Khan compared with other names?
- In Pakistan, Khan is the most common surname of 51,489 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Khan?
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/khanThe 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, “Khan” — the most common surname in Pakistan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.