Jeon
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A fried, filled pancake-like food eaten in Korea
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jeon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 78K(measured from records)
- KRSouth Korea1 in 69as 전
- KPNorth Korea≈1 in 786
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Jeon itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 260 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 786 (inferred from the name graph)
749,266 named 전, 2015
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled 전 in KR South Korea, AU Australia.
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)
A fried, filled pancake-like food eaten in Korea
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Jeon is read(measured from records)
Jeon is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- Korean56%
variant of Chon.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English27%
A fried, filled pancake-like food eaten in Korea
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Jeon 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #14 | 749,266as 전 | 1 in 69 | 749K | 전 | 227 |
| KP North Korea | #114 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 786 | 26 | Jeon | 31 |
| CN China | — | ≈4,600 est. | ≈1 in 306K | — | Jeon | 25 |
| US United States | — | 4,253 | 1 in 78K | 4.9K | Jeon | 260 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | 전 | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Jeon | 65 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 48K | — | Jeon | 21 |
749,266 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Chun Doo-hwanb. 1931KRnot in their usual name11th and 12th President of the Republic of Korea (1931~2021)
- Jeon Mi-seonb. 1970KRSouth Korean actress
- Yong Duk Jhunb. 1971KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean cinematographer and animator
- Jeon Do-yeonb. 1973KRSouth Korean actress
- Jeon So-minb. 1986KRSouth Korean actress, born 1986
- Jeon Ji-yoonb. 1990KRSouth Korean singer and rapper
- Jeon So Minb. 1996KRSouth Korean singer, born 1996
- Jeon Jung-kookb. 1997KRSouth Korean singer
- Jeon Soyeonb. 1998KRSouth Korean singer and rapper (born 1998)
- Jeon So-mib. 2001CACanadian-South Korean singer-songwriter and dancer (born 2001)
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 31 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.9K | #6,599 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.3K | #7,791 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.1K | #13,175 |
| KP North Korea | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 26 | #11 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Jeon mean, and where does it come from?
- A fried, filled pancake-like food eaten in Korea Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Jeon?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒən/ (IPA) for Korean.
- What are other forms of the name Jeon?
- In the etymology graph, Chon is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Jeon have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 749 thousand people named 전, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Jeon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,253 people named Jeon in 2010, about 1 in 78 thousand residents.
- How common is Jeon compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Jeon is the 14th most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jeon?
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/jeonThe 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, “Jeon” — the 14th most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.