Fanning
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably a variant of Fenning; first attested Thomas Fannyng 1405 FFEss
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Fanning is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Barbados it is the 7th most common surname.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 20K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 27K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 30K
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)
- Sources
- 403 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈38,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
probably a variant of Fenning; first attested Thomas Fannyng 1405 FFEss
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fanning 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 | — | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Fanning | 8 |
| US United States | — | 11,007 | 1 in 30K | 11K | Fanning | 403 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Fanning | 158 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Fanning | 89 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Fanning | 137 |
| IE Ireland | #635 | ≈670 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | — | Fanning | 90 |
| NO Norway | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Fanning | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Fanning | 35 |
| BB Barbados | #7 | — | — | — | Fanning | 3 |
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. 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)
Fanning 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 English, present participle and gerund of fan
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)
- Edmund Fanningb. 1769USAmerican explorer and sea captain (1769–1841)
- Jim Fanningb. 1927USAmerican baseball player, manager and executive (1927-2015)
- David Fanningb. 1946ZASouth African journalist
- Neil Fanningb. 1967AUAustralian actor
- Eric Fanningb. 1968USacting United States Secretary of the Air Force
- Bernard Fanningb. 1969AUAustralian recording artist; musician and singer-songwriter
- Shawn Fanningb. 1980USAmerican businessman
- Mick Fanningb. 1981AUAustralian surfer
- Dakota Fanningb. 1994USAmerican actress (born 1994)
- Elle Fanningb. 1998USAmerican actress
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 15 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,284 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #3,069 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 10K | #3,389 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Fanning mean, and where does it come from?
- probably a variant of Fenning; first attested Thomas Fannyng 1405 FFEss Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- In which country does Fanning have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 38 thousand people named Fanning in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fanning.
- How common is the name Fanning?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,007 people named Fanning in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
- How common is Fanning compared with other names?
- In Barbados, Fanning is the 7th most common surname of 11,500 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fanning?
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/fanningThe 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, “Fanning” — the 7th most common surname in Barbados. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.