Lan
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Vietnamese: to spread; to run
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/laŋ˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Singapore it is the 12th most common given name.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 198(inferred from the name graph)
- DKDenmark1 in 344as Line
- FRFrance≈1 in 407as Celine
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Lan itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #84 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 617 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 198 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,600,000 named Lynn, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Lynn in US United States, GB United Kingdom, SG Singapore and 3 more and Celine in FR France, NO Norway.
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)
alternatively, perhaps a nickname from a derivative of lania ‘hind’, ‘doe’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lan is read(measured from records)
Lan is one spelling over 2 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.
- Vietnamese59%
to spread; to run
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Hán-Việt; tên chúa Nguyễn, cùng bộ thủy.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
- English23%
Acronym of local area network.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Lan 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 | — | ≈1,600,000 est. | ≈1 in 886 | — | Lynn | 140 |
| VN Vietnam | #38 | ≈500,000 est. | ≈1 in 198 | listed | Lan | 217 |
| US United States | #41 | 193,296as Lynn | 1 in 1.7K | 164K | Lynn | 617 |
| FR France | #30 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 407 | 239K | Celine | 402 |
| GB United Kingdom | #60 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 840 | 77 | Lynn | 283 |
| DK Denmark | #363 | 17,062as Line | 1 in 344 | 17K | Lynn | 73 |
| NO Norway | #593 | 10,043as Line | 1 in 544 | 34K | Celine | 65 |
| IE Ireland | #33 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 784 | — | Lynn | 109 |
| SG Singapore | #12 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 984 | — | Lynn | 129 |
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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Lan 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.
alternatively, perhaps a nickname from a derivative of lania ‘hind’, ‘doe’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a place named Lan-tian (meaning ‘blue field’) in Guangdong province.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
perhaps from the vocabulary word lan ‘plowland’, ‘soil’.
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)
- Feng Youlanb. 1895CNnot in their usual nameChinese philosopher and historian (1895–1990)
- Grace Changb. 1933CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and singer (1933–2026)
- Trương Mỹ Lanb. 1956VNVietnamese businesswoman
- Ma Lanb. 1962CNactress
- Niels Lan Dokyb. 1963VNDanish jazz pianist, composer and producer
- Mai Lanb. 1982FRFrench-Vietnamese singer and fashion designer
- Lan Phươngb. 1983VNVietnamese actress
- Lu Lanb. 1987CNChinese badminton player
- Quách Thị Lanb. 1995VNVietnamese athlete
- Lana Condorb. 1997USnot in their usual nameVietnamese-American 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 71 sources across 36 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 13K | #1,923 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.7K | #1,923 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 266 | #3,883 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 97 | #1,641 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 16 | #21,161 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2019 | 5 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #12,915 |
Reference works 7
- 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
- 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)
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
- Where does the name Lan come from?
- alternatively, perhaps a nickname from a derivative of lania ‘hind’, ‘doe’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Lan?
- A machine transcription gives /laŋ˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- What does the name Lan mean?
- In Vietnamese, to spread; to run
- Is Lan a male or female name?
- Lan is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Lan?
- In the etymology graph, Ran, Mijo and Milenko are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Lan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.6 million people named Lynn in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Lan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 193,296 people named Lynn in 2020, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Lan compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Lan is the 12th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lan?
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/lanThe 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, “Lan” — the 12th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.