Kannan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: South Indian variant of KRISHNA
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɑnən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kannan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Indonesia than in any other country.
- SGSingapore≈1 in 4.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 9.8K
- USUnited States1 in 372K
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.
- Indonesia (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 265 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,600 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Singapore, 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)
South Indian variant of KRISHNA. Kanta @ Sanskrit: ‘desired’, ‘beautiful’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kannan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Kannan | 17 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | — | Kannan | 55 |
| AO Angola | #847 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Kannan | 3 |
| SG Singapore | #427 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 4.8K | — | Kannan | 63 |
| US United States | — | 895 | 1 in 372K | 2.6K | Kannan | 265 |
| LK Sri Lanka | — | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Kannan | 20 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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)
Kannan 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 German, männl. Vom., südindische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Hindi, variant of Krishnan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Swedish, definite singular of kanna
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, genitive singular of kanta
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Faroese, research, investigation
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Kannan Krishnanb. 1950USAmerican materials scientist
- Kannan Soundararajanb. 1973USIndian mathematician
- Kannan NavaneethamINresearcher
- Deva Kannan RamananUSAmerican AI and computer vision researcher
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 33 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,624 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #17,980 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 717 | #30,682 |
| 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
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- Where does the name Kannan come from?
- South Indian variant of KRISHNA. Kanta @ Sanskrit: ‘desired’, ‘beautiful’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Kannan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑnən/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- What does the name Kannan mean?
- Recorded meaning: South Indian variant of KRISHNA.
- Is Kannan a male or female name?
- Kannan 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.
- What are other forms of the name Kannan?
- In the etymology graph, Krisna is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Kannan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.6 thousand people named Kannan in Indonesia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kannan.
- How common is the name Kannan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 895 people named Kannan in 2020, about 1 in 372 thousand residents.
- How common is Kannan compared with other names?
- In Singapore, Kannan is the 427th most common given name of 52,448 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kannan?
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/kannanThe 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, “Kannan” — the 427th most common given name in Singapore. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.