Sebastian
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian. Bearer count: 1265
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Sebastian is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common given name.
- CLChile≈1 in 270(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 1.1K
- CZCzechia1 in 18as Jan
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 Sebastian 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #6 (measured from records)
- 9 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 731 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 270 (inferred from the name graph)
3,125,123 named John, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Chile, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled John in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines and 2 more, Jan in CZ Czechia, Ioan in RO Romania and Ион in MD Moldova.
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 the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sebastian is read(measured from records)
Sebastian 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.
- Spanish69%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sebastian in Spanish.
- German12%
Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian. Bearer count: 1265.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Sedlak Czech: occupational or status name for a peasant or Sebastianus, originally an ethnic name meaning ‘man from farmer, Czech sedlak, the equivalent of Ger. Bauer. A Sedov sedlak was a comparatively rich farmer, with more land than a zahradnik (smallholder) or a chaloupnik (cotter). Dim.: Czech: Sedlacek.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- English7.1%
from the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia'
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Venerable man from Sebasta; name of a 3rd-century saint.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
A man from Sebasta; name of a 3rd-century saint.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
Sebastian 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 | #3 | 3,125,123as John | 1 in 106 | 3.1M | John | 731 |
| NG Nigeria | #11 | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 177 | — | John | 190 |
| GB United Kingdom | #1 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 59 | 1.1K | John | 496 |
| PH Philippines | #3 | ≈750,000 est. | ≈1 in 145 | listed | John | 261 |
| CZ Czechia | #1 | 587,876as Jan | 1 in 18 | 588K | Jan | 233 |
| RO Romania | #151 | 447,697as Ioan | 1 in 48 | 448K | Ioan | 96 |
| MD Moldova | #332 | 100,110as Ion | 1 in 34 | 100K | Ион | 50 |
| IE Ireland | #1 | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 53 | — | John | 245 |
| CL Chile | #37 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 270 | 770 | Sebastian | 187 |
| ES Spain | #103 | 44,158 | 1 in 1.1K | 44K | Sebastian | 219 |
3,125,123 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); MVČR — living population register 2017; DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); e-services.md — living population register. 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)
Sebastian is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
From Latin Sebastianus, the name of a 3rd-century saint, a Roman soldier martyred by the arrows of his fellow officers. His sufferings were a favourite subject for medieval artists. The name means ‘man from Sebasté’, a city in Asia Minor so called from Greek sebastos ‘august’, ‘venerable’, used as a translation of the Latin imperial title Augustus. Short forms: Seb.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first 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)
- Johann Sebastian Bachb. 1685DEGerman composer (1685–1750)
- Sebastián Piñerab. 1949CLChilean entrepreneur and politician (1949–2024)
- Rowan Atkinsonb. 1955GBnot in their usual nameEnglish actor, comedian, and screenwriter (born 1955)
- Sebastian Coeb. 1956GBBritish athlete and politician (born 1956)
- Lionel Scalonib. 1978ARnot in their usual nameArgentine football coach (born 1978)
- Nicolas Anelkab. 1979FRnot in their usual nameFrench football manager (born 1979)
- Sébastien Ogierb. 1983FRnot in their usual nameFrench World Rally Championship driver
- Sébastien Lecornub. 1986FRnot in their usual namePrime Minister of France since 2025
- Sebastian Kurzb. 1986ATChancellor of Austria (2017–2019, 2020–2021)
- Sebastian Vettelb. 1987DEGerman racing driver
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 138 sources across 63 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 156K | #359 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 44K | #190 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 43K | #85 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 9.4K | #201 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8.6K | — |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 4.7K | #225 |
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 3.6K | #198 |
| GB United Kingdom | ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024) | 2024 | 1.1K | #45 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 489 | #359 |
Reference works 8
- 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 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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
- In which country does Sebastian have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.1 million people named John, more than in any other country we hold.
- Is Sebastian a male or female name?
- Sebastian is a male 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.
- Where does the name Sebastian come from?
- from the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Sebastian?
- In the etymology graph, Sébastien, Bastien and Sebastiano are forms of the same name in other languages; Bastian and Seppo are recorded short or pet forms.
- What does the name Sebastian mean?
- In German, Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian. Bearer count: 1265.
- How common is the name Sebastian?
- In Spain, the national register counted 44,158 people named Sebastian, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Sebastian compared with other names?
- In the United States, Sebastian is the 3rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sebastian?
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/sebastianThe 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, “Sebastian” — the 3rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.