Chan
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: different form of Chen; or person from Chan/Zhan, a territorial area of China
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Chan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 4th most common surname.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 20(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 229
- SGSingapore≈1 in 278
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #835 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 541 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 20 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,900,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
different form of Chen; or person from Chan/Zhan, a territorial area of China
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Chan is read(measured from records)
Chan is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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%
different form of Chen; or person from Chan/Zhan, a territorial area of China
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
An IRC channel.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish14%
alternative form of chía
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese9.3%
nonstandard spelling of chān
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Chan 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 | #898 | ≈1,900,000 est. | ≈1 in 727 | — | Chan | 141 |
| HK Hong Kong | #4 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 20 | — | Chan | 213 |
| MY Malaysia | #38 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 229 | 1.3K | Chan | 178 |
| US United States | #342 | 76,664 | 1 in 4.3K | 81K | Chan | 541 |
| PH Philippines | #246 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Chan | 160 |
| CA Canada | #54 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 1 | Chan | 291 |
| SG Singapore | #8 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 278 | — | Chan | 212 |
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; data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Chan 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.
In cdo, its ； liquor beginning to ^ clear ； a cup, a goblet. A small wine-cnp ； a shallow cup for oil ； the classifier of lamps : com" "(c'A?:" (ch(wg, a wine-cup; roix., ",A'<m〃 Jnoa W"m〃, blue flowered wiue-cup ； 、& (chiu 、chang ^khlng^ a very small wine-cup ； ^\ting (chanff、 an oil-saucer ； 、\Ung sioJa ^chang^ one lamp, cjin^ Muddy, unsettled spir-
as a wordAn Alphabetic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Foochow Dialect
In Khmer, n, name of a type of rhyme in Khmer poetry. (Pa, chando ‘meter.’) laS
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)
- Han Feib. 279CNnot in their usual nameChinese Legalist, 280–233 BCE
- Pridi Banomyongb. 1900THnot in their usual nameThai prime minister (1900-1983)
- Margaret Chanb. 1947CNChinese-Canadian physician (born 1947)
- Michael Paul Chanb. 1950USAmerican actor
- Chen Shui-bianb. 1950TWnot in their usual name10th and 11th President of Republic of China(Taiwan) (2000–2008)
- Jackie Chanb. 1954CNHong Kong actor and martial artist (born 1954)
- Joan Chenb. 1961CNnot in their usual nameChinese-American actress and director
- Steve Chenb. 1978TWnot in their usual nameChinese-American businessman
- Vanessa-Maeb. 1978SGnot in their usual nameBritish violinist
- Priscilla Chanb. 1985USAmerican pediatrician and philanthropist
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 75 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 81K | #384 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 77K | #425 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 66K | #459 |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- 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
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 Chan mean, and where does it come from?
- different form of Chen; or person from Chan/Zhan, a territorial area of China Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Chan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 million people named Chan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chan.
- How common is the name Chan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 76,664 people named Chan in 2010, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Chan compared with other names?
- In China, Chan is the 898th most common surname of 142,871 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chan?
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/chanThe 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, “Chan” — the 898th most common surname in China. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.