Byun
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈbjən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Byun is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Korean 변 (byeon).
- USUnited States1 in 160K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 467K
- ARArgentina1 in 1.2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 207 (measured from records)
- 1 in 160K (inferred from the name graph)
2,082 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
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)
Borrowed from Korean 변 (byeon).
Sources 1
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Byun 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 | — | 2,082 | 1 in 160K | 2.6K | Byun | 207 |
| AR Argentina | — | 38 | 1 in 1.2M | 38 | — | — |
| PL Poland | — | 28 | 1 in 1.4M | 17 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 18 | 1 in 467K | 18 | — | 5 |
| ES Spain | — | 6 | 1 in 8.3M | 6 | — | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 5 | 1 in 3.5M | 5 | Byun | 11 |
| KR South Korea | #127 | — | — | — | Byun | 160 |
2,082 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 — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Byeon Yeong-taeb. 1892KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean politician (1892-1969)
- Byeon Jang-hob. 1940KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean film director (1940–2022)
- Byeon Hee-bongb. 1942KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor (1942–2023)
- Byun Young-joob. 1966KRSouth Korean film director
- Son Yeo-eunb. 1983KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress, born 1983
- Lee Da-haeb. 1984KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actress, 1984
- Byun Yo-hanb. 1986KRSouth Korean actor
- Byeon Woo-seokb. 1991KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean model and actor
- Byun Baek-hyunb. 1992KRSouth Korean singer
- Byun Sung-hyunKRSouth Korean director
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 15 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,519 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.1K | #14,363 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #15,293 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 38 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 18 | #39,486 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 17 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 17 | #97,821 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 11 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 11 | #125,310 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6 | #154,812 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 5 | #75,784 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Byun mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Korean 변 (byeon). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Byun?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈbjən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Byun have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.1 thousand people named Byun, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled byun.
- Where is Byun most common?
- Byun is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 160 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Byun?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,082 people named Byun in 2010, about 1 in 160 thousand residents.
- How common is Byun compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Byun is the 127th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Byun?
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/byunThe 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, “Byun” — the 127th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.