Kangas
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from kangas ‘pine heath’, a habitational name from a farmstead so named; traditionally this was convenient terrain for siting a farm, and the oldest holdings date back to the medieval period
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkæŋɡəz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kangas is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country.
- FIFinland1 in 455(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 70K
- SESweden1 in 13K
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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 94 (measured from records)
- 1 in 455 (inferred from the name graph)
12,246 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
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 kangas ‘pine heath’, a habitational name from a farmstead so named; traditionally this was convenient terrain for siting a farm, and the oldest holdings date back to the medieval period. Kangas was also widely adopted as an ornamental name during the name conversion movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is found mainly in Ostrobothnia.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kangas 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.
12,246 people counted by DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); the ee-stat-nimed 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)
Kangas 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 Finnish, cloth, fabric, textile (woven fabric)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In urj-fin-pro, cloth, fabric
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In izh, fabric, cloth
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Locekļi, ekstremitātes
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Aužamie stāvi (Kursā)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Kevin Kangasb. 1901USAmerican film director
- Reino Kangasb. 1910FIFinnish politician
- Orvokki Kangasb. 1921FIFinnish politician
- Paul Kangasb. 1937USAmerican journalist (1937-2017)
- Tove Skutnabb-Kangasb. 1940FIFinnish linguist (1940–2023)
- Matti Kangasb. 1944FIFinnish politician
- Juha Kangasb. 1945FIFinnish conductor and violist (born 1945)
- Robert Kangasb. 1951SESwedish writer
- Kaija Kangasb. 1952FIFinnish actress
- Sami Kangasb. 1971FIFinnish 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 12K | #121 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 5.7K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4.8K | #7,013 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.2K | #7,579 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.2K | #7,347 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 761 | #1,302 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 29 | #3,769 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 16 | #6,913 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Kangas mean, and where does it come from?
- from kangas ‘pine heath’, a habitational name from a farmstead so named; traditionally this was convenient terrain for siting a farm, and the oldest holdings date back to the medieval period. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kangas?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkæŋɡəz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kangas have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Kangas, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kangas.
- Where is Kangas most common?
- Kangas is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 455 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kangas?
- In Finland, the national register counted 12,246 people named Kangas, about 1 in 455 residents.
- How common is Kangas compared with other names?
- In Finland, Kangas is the 182nd most common surname of 94,499 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kangas?
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/kangasThe 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, “Kangas” — the 182nd most common surname in Finland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.