Boon
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) from a medieval nickname for a good person, from Old French bon ‘good’; (ii) also Bohun, ‘person from Bohon’ in northern France; (iii) ‘grower or seller of beans’, or perhaps a medieval Dutch nick
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/boon/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Boon is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country, where it is the 34th most common given name.
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 765(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 1.6K
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 12K
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.
- Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 305 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 765 (inferred from the name graph)
≈43,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Malaysia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
(i) from a medieval nickname for a good person, from Old French bon ‘good’; (ii) also Bohun, ‘person from Bohon’ in northern France; (iii) ‘grower or seller of beans’, or perhaps a medieval Dutch nickname for a thin person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
How Boon is read(measured from records)
Boon 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.
- Malay50%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Boon in Malay.
- English35%
(i) from a medieval nickname for a good person, from Old French bon ‘good’; (ii) also Bohun, ‘person from Bohon’ in northern France; (iii) ‘grower or seller of beans’, or perhaps a medieval Dutch nickname for a thin person.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from Bohon (La Manche); first attested Hunfridus de Bohum 1086 DB (Nf)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
Hunfridus de Bohum 1086 DB (Nf); Wnfridus de Bowhun 1120–3 EngFeud; William de Boun 1119 Colch (Ess); Matildis de Bohun Hy 2 DC (L); John de Bown 1275 RH (Sx). Reginald Boon’ 1279 RH (C). From Bohon (La Manche). Bohun’s Hall (Essex) is Boneshall 1540, Bowneshall 1604 (PN Ess 305) and is now pronounced Boon’s Hall.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A good thing; a thing to be thankful for or to appreciate duly.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Dutch6.4%
bean
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)
Boon 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MY Malaysia | #34 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 765 | — | Boon | 130 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Boon | 32 |
| CN China | — | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 188K | — | Boon | 26 |
| SG Singapore | #110 | ≈3,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Boon | 134 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 41K | 1 | Boon | 144 |
| US United States | — | 589 | 1 in 565K | 2.3K | Boon | 305 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Boon | 18 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–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)
Boon 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.
In Khmer, to pout; to make a wry face at someone,* to point out someone or something by sticking out the lower lip and pointing with it (may or may not express contempt or derision)
as a wordHeadley, Cambodian-English Dictionary, Volume I (ក-ភ)
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)
- Loh Boon Siewb. 1915MYMalaysian businessman
- Boon Collinsfilm director
- Ngau Boon KeatMYMalaysian oil industrialist
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 38 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,370 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.1K | #13,554 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.1K | #13,359 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Boon mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from a medieval nickname for a good person, from Old French bon ‘good’; (ii) also Bohun, ‘person from Bohon’ in northern France; (iii) ‘grower or seller of beans’, or perhaps a medieval Dutch nick… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Boon?
- A machine transcription gives /boon/ (IPA) for Malay.
- Is Boon a male or female name?
- Boon 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.
- In which country does Boon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 43 thousand people named Boon in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boon.
- How common is the name Boon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 589 people named Boon in 2020, about 1 in 565 thousand residents.
- How common is Boon compared with other names?
- In Malaysia, Boon is the 34th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Boon?
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/boonThe 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, “Boon” — the 34th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.