Kan
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Turkish: blood
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kan/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 802(inferred from the name graph)
- TWTaiwan≈1 in 3K
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 6.2K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 322 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 802 (inferred from the name graph)
≈88,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hong Kong, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Middle Dutch kan(ne), can(ne) ‘tankard’, ‘flagon’, ‘pitcher’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such vessels: a potter or a pewterer.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kan is read(measured from records)
Kan is one spelling over 4 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.
- Turkish32%
blood
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English26%
Archaic form of khan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kan in Chinese.
- Hindi5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kan in Hindi.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈88,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kan | 84 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Kan | 37 |
| HK Hong Kong | #109 | ≈9,000 est. | ≈1 in 802 | — | Kan | 96 |
| TW Taiwan | #434 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Kan | 93 |
| MY Malaysia | #684 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Kan | 73 |
| US United States | — | 3,005 | 1 in 111K | 3.2K | Kan | 322 |
| SG Singapore | #721 | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Kan | 94 |
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 2020. 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)
Kan is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from Middle Dutch kan(ne), can(ne) ‘tankard’, ‘flagon’, ‘pitcher’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such vessels: a potter or a pewterer.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
4. Czech (Kan): from kanit meaning ‘to slobber or slaver’ and by extension ‘to gossip’, hence a nickname for a gossip.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the name of a place called Kan which existed during the Spring and Autumn period (722^81 BC) in the state of Lu, in present-day Shandong province. Some residents adopted the place name as their surname.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name for someone from De Kan in Veume or a place called Kanne.
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)
- Gan Yingb. 100not in their usual nameLate first century Chinese military ambassador
- Gan Jib. 101CNnot in their usual nameChinese Taoist priest (died 200)
- Gan Ningb. 175CNnot in their usual nameGeneral serving warlord Sun Quan (died c. 220)
- Gan Deb. 400not in their usual name4th-century BC Chinese astronomer and astrologer
- Daniel Marinus Kanb. 1927NLmathematician, prolific contributor to homotopy theory (1927–2013)
- Yuet Wai Kanb. 1936USHong Kong geneticist
- Naoto Kanb. 1946JP94th Prime Minister of Japan
- Regina Kentb. 1967CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress (1967–1999)
- Justin Kanb. 1983USAmerican internet entrepreneur
- Jian Man-shub. 1988TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese actress and director
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 63 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.2K | #9,644 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3K | #10,647 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,816 |
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)
- 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
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
- Where does the name Kan come from?
- from Middle Dutch kan(ne), can(ne) ‘tankard’, ‘flagon’, ‘pitcher’, hence a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such vessels: a potter or a pewterer. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kan?
- A machine transcription gives /kan/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- What does the name Kan mean?
- In Turkish, blood
- In which country does Kan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 88 thousand people named Kan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kan.
- How common is the name Kan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,005 people named Kan in 2010, about 1 in 111 thousand residents.
- How common is Kan compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Kan is the 109th most common surname of 8,142 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kan?
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/kanThe 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, “Kan” — the 109th most common surname in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.