Rowan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Gaelic Ruadhán, descendant of Ruadhán, a personal name meaning ‘little red-haired one’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Rowan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 15K
- CACanada≈1 in 19K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 422 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
13,993 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Gaelic Ruadhán, descendant of Ruadhán, a personal name meaning ‘little red-haired one’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rowan 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 | — | 13,993 | 1 in 24K | 25K | Rowan | 422 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 1.2K | Rowan | 226 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 64 | Rowan | 161 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 10 | Rowan | 199 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Rowan | 15 |
| IE Ireland | #899 | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Rowan | 77 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 48 | Rowan | 125 |
13,993 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Rowan 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 Irish, ‘Little red one’; an Irish name still in use today.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, Celtic; from the rowan tree or red-haired.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, Sorbus aucuparia, the European rowan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, tree
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, from the place name Rouen, France
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- John Rowanb. 1773USAmerican politician, Kentucky (1773-1843)
- William Rowanb. 1789IMBritish Field Marshal
- Ellis Rowanb. 1848AUAustralian artist, botanical illustrator and botanical collector (1848-1922)
- Eric Rowanb. 1909ZASouth African cricketer (1909-1993)
- Dan Rowanb. 1922USAmerican actor and comedian (1922-1987)
- Peter Rowanb. 1942USAmerican bluegrass musician
- Marc Rowanb. 1962USCEO of Apollo Global Management
- Kelly Rowanb. 1965CACanadian actress
- Akebono Tarōb. 1969USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and rikishi (1969–2024)
- Jack Rowanb. 1997GBactor
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 75 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,581 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,408 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 13K | #2,626 |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
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 Rowan mean, and where does it come from?
- from Gaelic Ruadhán, descendant of Ruadhán, a personal name meaning ‘little red-haired one’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Rowan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Rowan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rowan.
- What are other forms of the name Rowan?
- In the etymology graph, Rowen is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Rowan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,993 people named Rowan in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Rowan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Rowan is the 899th most common surname of 73,729 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rowan?
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/rowanThe 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, “Rowan” — the 899th most common surname in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.