Havas
surname · Latin script
Meaning: most probably a nickname from Old Hungarian havas ‘sleepwalker’, one of several Hungarian family names deriving from terms denoting illnesses
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Havas is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Syria than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 1.2M(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 32K
- SYSyria≈1 in 45K
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.
- Syria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 141 (measured from records)
- 1 in 32K (inferred from the name graph)
≈430 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Havaş in SY Syria.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
most probably a nickname from Old Hungarian havas ‘sleepwalker’, one of several Hungarian family names deriving from terms denoting illnesses. Less likely, but nevertheless possible, is derivation from a nickname for someone with prematurely white hair, from the Hungarian vocabulary word havas ‘snowy’, ‘snow-covered’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Havas 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.
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 2000; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Havas 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 Hungarian, snowy, snow-covered, besnowed (covered with snow)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, The mesh fabric of a fishnet or fish-trap.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, passive infinitive of hava
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In io, present of havar
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Esperanto, present of havi
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)
- Charles-Louis Havasb. 1783FRFrench journalist (1783–1858)
- András Havasb. 1891HUHungarian physician
- Väinö Havasb. 1898FIFinnish poet and politician (1898-1941)
- Kató Havasb. 1920HURomanian violinist (1920-2018)
- Ervin Szuhay-Havasb. 1929HUHungarian writer, poet, literary translator (1929–1998)
- Ferenc Havasb. 1935HUHungarian dancer (1935–2007)
- Henrik Havasb. 1949HUHungarian journalist
- Szófia Havasb. 1955HUHungarian politician
- Sari Havasb. 1962FIFinnish actress
- Lianne La Havasb. 1989GBBritish musician
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 24 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 331 | #57,544 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 298 | #70,715 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 276 | #70,833 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 174 | #8,295 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 98 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 53 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 48 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 45 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 43 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 35 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 35 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 32 | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Havas mean, and where does it come from?
- most probably a nickname from Old Hungarian havas ‘sleepwalker’, one of several Hungarian family names deriving from terms denoting illnesses. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Havas have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 427 people named Havas in Syria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled havaş.
- Where is Havas most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Havas is densest in Finland — about 1 in 32 thousand people — even though Syria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Havas?
- In the United States, the national register counted 276 people named Havas in 2010, about 1 in 1.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Havas?
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/havasThe 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, “Havas”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.