Johan
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: Dutch/German given name corresponding to John; source of patronymic surnames
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/xoan/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Johan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 58(measured from records)
- BJBenin≈1 in 183
- BEBelgium≈1 in 523
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.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- Sources
- 346 (measured from records)
- 1 in 58 (inferred from the name graph)
175,036 people
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Dutch/German given name corresponding to John; source of patronymic surnames.
Sources 1
- Tên Họ Người Việt Nam
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Johan is read(measured from records)
Johan is one spelling over 6 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 4 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.
- Spanish31%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Johan in Spanish.
- French15%
Forme germanique de Jean, du hébreu Yôḥānān, « Dieu fait grâce ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Origine hébraïque, « Dieu a fait grâce ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- English11%
Biblical name
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Swedish10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Johan in Swedish.
- Dutch7.7%
Dutch/German given name corresponding to John; source of patronymic surnames.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
- Finnish7.3%
form of jo (with enclitic-han)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Johan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | #5 | 175,036 | 1 in 58 | 175K | Johan | 230 |
| ZA South Africa | #49 | ≈93,000 est. | ≈1 in 607 | — | Johan | 116 |
| BJ Benin | #3 | ≈70,000 est. | ≈1 in 183 | — | Johan | 11 |
| FR France | — | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 35K | Johan | 9 |
| BE Belgium | #66 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 523 | 15 | Johan | 190 |
| FI Finland | #500 | 16,456 | 1 in 339 | 37K | Johan | 67 |
| NO Norway | #46 | 9,810 | 1 in 557 | 30K | Johan | 129 |
175,036 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)
Johan 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 German, männl. Vom., Schreibvariante von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Johan IIIb. 1537SESwedish king (1537-1592)
- Henrik Ibsenb. 1828NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian playwright and theatre director (1828–1906)
- August Strindbergb. 1849SEnot in their usual nameSwedish writer and painter (1849–1912)
- Jean Sibeliusb. 1865FInot in their usual nameFinnish composer (1865–1957)
- Johan Ferrierb. 1910NLDutch-Surinamese politician (1910-2010)
- Johan Galtungb. 1930NONorwegian sociologist and peace scholar
- Johan Neeskensb. 1951NLDutch football manager and player (1951–2024)
- Harald Zwartb. 1965NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian director
- Florent Maloudab. 1980FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1980)
- Pilou Asbækb. 1982DKnot in their usual nameDanish actor
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 121 sources across 60 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 175K | #10 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 74K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 37K | #54 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 35K | #364 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 30K | #139 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 16K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 9.8K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 175 | — |
Reference works 10
- 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 given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Johan mean, and where does it come from?
- Dutch/German given name corresponding to John; source of patronymic surnames. Recorded by Tên Họ Người Việt Nam.
- What are other forms of the name Johan?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages; Hans, Hanne and Hannes are recorded short or pet forms.
- How do you pronounce Johan?
- A machine transcription gives /xoan/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Johan a male or female name?
- Johan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Johan have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 175 thousand people named Johan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled johan.
- Where is Johan most common?
- Johan is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 58 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Johan?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 175,036 people named Johan, about 1 in 58 residents.
- How common is Johan compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Johan is the 5th most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Johan?
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/johanThe 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, “Johan” — the 5th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.