Gunn

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Either from an occupational name for a cannon operator, from an Old Norse personal name meaning ‘battle’, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac Ghille Dhuin

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Gunn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 7.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 8.2K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 8.2K

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.

United States (measured from records)

23,524 people, 2010

Sources
447 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.8K (inferred from the name graph)

United Kingdom, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Either from an occupational name for a cannon operator, from an Old Norse personal name meaning ‘battle’, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac Ghille Dhuin.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Gunn 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 Gunn is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—23,5241 in 14K24KGunn447
GB United Kingdom#709≈8,500 est.≈1 in 7.8KlistedGunn235
CA Canada—≈3,400 est.≈1 in 11K—Gunn189
AU Australia#756≈3,100 est.≈1 in 8.2K—Gunn169
EG Egypt—≈3,100 est.≈1 in 34K—Gunn7
NZ New Zealand#577≈600 est.≈1 in 8.2K—Gunn103
IE Ireland#958≈460 est.≈1 in 11K—Gunn55

23,524 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; the scottish-surnames-ross-1994 register. 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)

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

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, United Kingdom

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Günn

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Also written Günn

  • a separate surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway

    Also written Günn

63 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)

Gunn is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, From the Norse personal name Gunni, son of Olaf; pet form of a longer name such as Gunnólfr, ‘war wolf’. Clan Gunn stems from him.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • Gunni was the son of Olaf, a 12th-century Norse chieftain in Caithness. It is a pet form of a longer name such as Gunnólfr, ‘war wolf’. The Clan Gunn of the Caithness–Sutherland border stems from him. Gunnison might be expected but has no record. In Gaelic, the chief of Gunn of Braemore (Caithness) was known as Mac Sheumais Chataich, ‘son of James of Sutherland’. H _____________

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • metonymic occupational name for someone who operated a siege engine or cannon, perhaps also a nickname for a forceful person, from Middle English gunne, gonne ‘ballista’, ‘cannon’, ‘gun’. The term originated as a humorous application of the Scandinavian female personal name Gunne or Gunnhildr.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • name of a clan associated with Caithness, derived from the Old Norse personal name Gunnr (or the feminine form Gunne), a short form of any of various compound names with the first element gunn ‘battle’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • sometimes an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gille Dhuinn ‘son of the servant of the brown one’ (see Dunn). (According to Woulfe a name of the same form also existed in Sligo, Ireland.)

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

19201940196019802000Moses Gunn, b. 1929Tim Gunn, b. 1953Bryan Gunn, b. 1963James Gunn, b. 1966Andrew Gunn, b. 1967Anna Gunn, b. 1968Brian Gunn, b. 1970Jon Gunn, b. 1973Sean Gunn, b. 1974Angus Gunn, b. 1996
  • Moses Gunnb. 1929USAmerican actor (1929–1993)
  • Tim Gunnb. 1953USAmerican actor and fashion consultant
  • Bryan Gunnb. 1963GBScottish association football player and manager (born 1963)
  • James Gunnb. 1966USAmerican screenwriter and filmmaker (born 1966)
  • Andrew Gunnb. 1967CACanadian film producer
  • Anna Gunnb. 1968USAmerican actress
  • Brian Gunnb. 1970USAmerican actor
  • Jon Gunnb. 1973USAmerican film writer, editor, producer
  • Sean Gunnb. 1974USAmerican actor
  • Angus Gunnb. 1996GBScottish association football player

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 Gunn,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 48 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Gunn
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201024K#1,525
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202023K#1,524
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200022K#1,475
GB United KingdomScottish Surnames (Ross, 1994)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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 given-name tokens
  • 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 Gunn mean, and where does it come from?
Either from an occupational name for a cannon operator, from an Old Norse personal name meaning ‘battle’, or from Scottish Gaelic Mac Ghille Dhuin. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Gunn?
A machine transcription gives /ɡən/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Gunn have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 24 thousand people named Gunn, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gunn.
How common is the name Gunn?
In the United States, the national register counted 23,524 people named Gunn in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
How common is Gunn compared with other names?
In New Zealand, Gunn is the 577th most common surname of 87,225 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Gunn?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Gunn” — the 577th most common surname in New Zealand. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Gunn parses inside a full name →