Son
loc · Latin script
Meaning: OE sunu, ME sone ‘son’, perhaps ‘the younger’, junior; first attested John Sune 1203 P (Wa)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Son is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 24th most common surname.
- KRSouth Korea1 in 113as 손(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 6.6K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 20K
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 Son 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.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- Sources
- 237 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.6K (inferred from the name graph)
457,356 named 손, 2015
Highest-authority source
Netherlands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled 손 in KR South Korea, US United States, AU Australia and 3 more.
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)
OE sunu, ME sone ‘son’, perhaps ‘the younger’, junior; first attested John Sune 1203 P (Wa)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Son 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #24 | 457,356as 손 | 1 in 113 | 503K | 손 | 199 |
| CN China | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | 손 | 33 |
| US United States | — | 10,094 | 1 in 33K | 42K | 손 | 237 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | 23 | — | 5 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 51K | — | 손 | 16 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈920 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 1 | 손 | 4 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | 손 | 18 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈40 est. | ≈1 in 30K | 7 | — | 6 |
457,356 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); the au-bdm-babynames register; Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)
Son 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 English, One's male offspring.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In otk, originally perhaps physically ‘the end, or back’ of something, but normally used of time, as a N. ‘the end’, an Adj. ‘later, subsequent’, and an Adv. or Postposn. ‘afterwards, after (w. Abl.)’
as a wordClauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (1972)
In Russian, "dream."
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Italian, apocopic form of sono (“I am; they are”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, harvested young garlic at the age of 70 days after planting
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)
- Sun Quanb. 182CNnot in their usual nameEmperor of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period
- Sun Tzub. 544CNnot in their usual name6th century BCE Chinese general and military strategist
- Sun Yat-senb. 1866CNnot in their usual nameChinese politician, physician, and revolutionary (1866–1925)
- Masayoshi Sonb. 1957JPJapanese businessman
- Stefanie Sunb. 1978SGnot in their usual nameSingaporean singer
- Son Ye-jinb. 1982KRSouth Korean actress
- Susan Sunb. 1982CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Son Heung-minb. 1992KRSouth Korean association football player (born 1992)
- Wendyb. 1994KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer and actress
- Son Chae-youngb. 1999KRSouth Korean rapper and singer
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 71 sources across 36 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | KOSIS — 2015 census surnames | 2015 | 503K | #23 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 42K | #994 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,326 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 10K | #3,541 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.8K | #4,189 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #994 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 23 | #18,129 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 7 | #13,677 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 7 | #14,106 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2019 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1957 | 5 | — |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2014 | 1 | — |
Reference works 8
- 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 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 Son mean, and where does it come from?
- OE sunu, ME sone ‘son’, perhaps ‘the younger’, junior; first attested John Sune 1203 P (Wa) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Son have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 457 thousand people named 손, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Son?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,094 people named Son in 2010, about 1 in 33 thousand residents.
- How common is Son compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Son is the 24th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Son?
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/sonThe 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, “Son” — the 24th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.