Canna

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Any member of the genus Canna of tropical plants with large leaves and often showy flowers

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/kanə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Canna is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.6M(measured from records)
  • ITItaly≈1 in 126K
  • KEKenya≈1 in 468K

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.

India (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,000 people, est.

Sources
113 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 126K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Apparently from the name of a genus of plants that have attractive, brightly coloured flowers and are widely cultivated in parts of the world with a warm climate. This is now relatively well established as a first name in Australia. The botanical name represents Latin canna ‘reed’.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

How Canna is read(measured from records)

Canna is one spelling over 4 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.

  • English58%

    Any member of the genus Canna of tropical plants with large leaves and often showy flowers.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    plant

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Spanish12%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Canna in Spanish.

  • Italian7.4%

    cane

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    do lat. canna; caniço, taquara, junco; também pode indicar oriundo da cidade meridional homônima

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • Hindi5.9%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Canna in Hindi.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Canna 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.

Where Canna is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India≈1,000 est.≈1 in 1.3MlistedCanna6
IT Italy≈500 est.≈1 in 126KlistedCanna21
US United States2021 in 1.6M204Canna113
KE Kenya≈110 est.≈1 in 468K—Canna1
GB United Kingdom≈56 est.≈1 in 1.2MlistedCanna17
NL Netherlands241 in 720K24Canna6
CH Switzerland151 in 560K15—8
IE Ireland≈9 est.≈1 in 599K—Canna14

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; the xinhua-italian-manual register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Canna is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, Italy, United States, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

    Also written Cânna

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Cannā

  • Sinhala given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sri Lanka, United States, India, United Kingdom

    Also written Channa, චන්න

41 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Canna is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Apparently from the name of a genus of plants that have attractive, brightly coloured flowers and are widely cultivated in parts of the world with a warm climate. This is now relatively well established as a first name in Australia. The botanical name represents Latin canna ‘reed’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In sco, Orkney form of cannae (“cannot”)

    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)

18001850190019502000Giovanni Canna, b. 1832Rinaldo Canna, b. 1926Achille Canna, b. 1932Carlo Canna, b. 1992

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 25 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Canna
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020204#95,802
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000203#85,643
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010202#91,221
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)200724#45,692
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202415#45,119
IT Italy意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • 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

Where does the name Canna come from?
Apparently from the name of a genus of plants that have attractive, brightly coloured flowers and are widely cultivated in parts of the world with a warm climate. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
What are other forms of the name Canna?
In the etymology graph, Cannata is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Canna?
A machine transcription gives /kanə/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Canna mean?
In English, Any member of the genus Canna of tropical plants with large leaves and often showy flowers.
In which country does Canna have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.0 thousand people named Canna in India, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled canna.
How common is the name Canna?
In the United States, the national register counted 202 people named Canna in 2010, about 1 in 1.6 million residents.

What do you want to know about Canna?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/canna

The 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, “Canna”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Canna parses inside a full name →