Hoban
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Hoban is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from Irish Gaelic ó hUbdin, ‘descendant of Ubdn’, a personal name of unknown origin.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 41K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 51K
- USUnited States1 in 97K
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.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 322 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ireland, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Irish Gaelic ó hUbdin, ‘descendant of Ubdn’, a personal name of unknown origin
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Where in the world(measured from records)
Hoban 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Hoban | 1 |
| US United States | 3,439 | 1 in 97K | 3.4K | Hoban | 322 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 51K | listed | Hoban | 139 |
| AU Australia | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Hoban | 106 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 536K | — | Hoban | 22 |
| IE Ireland | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Hoban | 66 |
| CU Cuba | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Hoban | 1 |
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 hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Hoban 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.
cendant of Ubdn’, a personal name of unknown origin. Hobart see Hubert Hdcht see Hecht Hochz0it Jewish (Ashkenazic): presumably a surname taken by someone who was about to get married or who had just been married at the time when the surname was first registered, from Ger. Hochzeit wedding (from MHG hoch(ge)zrt festival, lit. ‘high time’). Hocke see Hake
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Anglicized form of Gaelic 6 hUbain ‘descendant of Ubdn’, a personal name of unknown origin.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, relationship name from the Middle English personal name Hobb(e), a rhyming pet form of Robert. See also Hobbs .
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
In Romanian, guy-wire
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, HOBÁN, hobane, s. n. Coardă, de obicei din sârmă de oțel, care servește la legătura aripilor cu fuzelajul unui avion. ♦ Coardă pentru susținerea catargelor.
as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology
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)
- James Hobanb. 1762IEIrish architect
- Michael John Hobanb. 1853USCatholic bishop (1853-1926)
- Walter Hobanb. 1890UScartoonist (1890–1939)
- Russell Hobanb. 1925USAmerican expatriate writer and illustrator (1925-2011)
- Lillian Hobanb. 1925USAmerican children's illustrator and writer (1925–1998)
- Barry Hobanb. 1940GBroad bicycle racer
- Mike Hobanb. 1952USAmerican football player
- Steve Hobanb. 1964CACanadian film producer (born 1964)
- Ovidiu Hobanb. 1982RORomanian footballer
- Tommie Hobanb. 1994GBassociation football player (born 1994)
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 23 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.4K | #9,461 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.1K | #9,905 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3K | #9,939 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Hoban mean, and where does it come from?
- from Irish Gaelic ó hUbdin, ‘descendant of Ubdn’, a personal name of unknown origin Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Hoban?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,439 people named Hoban in 2010, about 1 in 97 thousand residents.
- In which country does Hoban have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.0 thousand people named Hoban in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hoban.
What do you want to know about Hoban?
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/hobanThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Hoban”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.