Cannan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Manx: from Ir Mac Cannanain, ‘son of Cannanari’ (from Ceann-fhionn, ‘white head’); first attested MacCannon 1511
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkænən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cannan is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- GBUnited Kingdom
- USUnited States
- AUAustralia
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Manx: from Ir Mac Cannanain, ‘son of Cannanari’ (from Ceann-fhionn, ‘white head’); first attested MacCannon 1511
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)
Cannan 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.
El humilde
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Jane Cannanb. 1822AUAnglo-Australian artist (1822–1861)
- Edwin Cannanb. 1861GBBritish economist (1861–1935)
- Mary Ansellb. 1861GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor and author (1861-1950)
- James Cannanb. 1882AUAustralian general (1882–1976)
- Gilbert Cannanb. 1884GBBritish writer (1884–1955)
- May Wedderburn Cannanb. 1893GBEnglish poet
- Joanna Cannanb. 1898GBEnglish children's writer and novelist (1896–1961)
- Jack Cannanb. 1899AUAustralian rules footballer
- Denis Cannanb. 1919GBBritish playwright and screenwriter (1919–2011)
- Alfred Cannanb. 1968IMpolitician
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 14 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 847 | #29,674 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 752 | #29,570 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 741 | #31,285 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 8 | #11,211 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3 | #4,993 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 1 | #165,924 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- How do you pronounce Cannan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkænən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Cannan mean, and where does it come from?
- Manx: from Ir Mac Cannanain, ‘son of Cannanari’ (from Ceann-fhionn, ‘white head’); first attested MacCannon 1511 Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Cannan have the most bearers?
- Cannan is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Cannan?
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/cannanThe 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, “Cannan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.