Susan
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Susan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ireland it is the 12th most common given name. Recorded meaning: (i) from the female personal name Susan, from Hebrew Shushannah ‘lily’; (ii) from Jewish male personal name Susan, from Arabic susan ‘lily’; (iii) ‘person who lives at the top end of a village or high.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 170(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 189
- CNChina≈1 in 209
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 Susan 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)
- #55 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 652 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 170 (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,700,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Suzanne in SE Sweden.
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)
- Hebrew Shushannah‘lily’(measured from records)
- Jewishmale(measured from records)
- Arabicsusan(measured from records)
(i) from the female personal name Susan, from Hebrew Shushannah ‘lily’; (ii) from Jewish male personal name Susan, from Arabic susan ‘lily’; (iii) ‘person who lives at the top end of a village or high up a valley’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Susan 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 | — | ≈6,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 209 | — | Susan | 90 |
| US United States | #19 | 979,771 | 1 in 340 | 979K | Susan | 652 |
| GB United Kingdom | #16 | ≈390,000 est. | ≈1 in 170 | 27 | Susan | 381 |
| EG Egypt | #159 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 576 | listed | Susan | 74 |
| PH Philippines | #104 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 629 | — | Susan | 146 |
| SE Sweden | #329 | 51,220as Susanne | 1 in 199 | 51K | Suzanne | 103 |
| DK Denmark | #158 | 29,668as Susanne | 1 in 198 | 30K | Susan | 128 |
| IE Ireland | #12 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 189 | — | Susan | 152 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)
Susan 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, from Hebrew Shushannah 'lily'; first attested Susanna 1194 CurR (Suffolk)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
English vernacular form of Susanna, always the most common of this group of names. A 20th-century influence has been the American film star Susan Hayward (1918-75). Variant: Suzan. Short form: Sue, Su, Soo. Pet forms: Susie, Suzie, Suzy, Sukie, Sukey. ie 228
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Arabic, lily of the valley; iris
as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names
In English, French; a lily; from the name Susanna
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, Hebrew; a lily
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)
- Susan B. Anthonyb. 1820USAmerican women's rights activist (1820–1906)
- Susan Haywardb. 1917USAmerican actress (1917–1975)
- Susan Sontagb. 1933USAmerican writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist (1933–2004)
- A. S. Byattb. 1936GBnot in their usual nameBritish writer (1936–2023)
- Susan Sarandonb. 1946USAmerican actress and activist
- Sigourney Weaverb. 1949USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (born 1949)
- Linda Lovelaceb. 1949USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress (1949-2002)
- Susan Boyleb. 1961GBBritish singer
- Susan Wojcickib. 1968USAmerican business executive (1968–2024) Former CEO of YouTube
- Candice Swanepoelb. 1988ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African model
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 125 sources across 58 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 979K | #26 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4.3K | #154 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.9K | #859 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 1.8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 564 | #26 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 222 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 18 | #4,772 |
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
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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 Susan mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the female personal name Susan, from Hebrew Shushannah ‘lily’; (ii) from Jewish male personal name Susan, from Arabic susan ‘lily’; (iii) ‘person who lives at the top end of a village or high… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Susan?
- In the etymology graph, Suzanne, Susanne and Suzan are forms of the same name in other languages; Susie, Suzy and Suzie are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Susan a male or female name?
- Susan 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.
- In which country does Susan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.7 million people named Susan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled susan.
- How common is the name Susan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 979,771 people named Susan in 2020, about 1 in 340 residents.
- How common is Susan compared with other names?
- In Ireland, Susan is the 12th most common given name of 14,976 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Susan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/susanThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Susan” — the 12th most common given name in Ireland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.