Kanten

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Kanten is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country. In English, recorded as agar.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 70K(measured from records)
  • TNTunisia≈1 in 294K
  • NLNetherlands≈1 in 303K

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.

Italy (inferred from the name graph)

≈120 people, est.

Sources
70 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 70K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

made or consisting of lace

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

How Kanten is read(measured from records)

Kanten is one spelling over 3 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.

  • English67%

    agar

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Dutch5.7%

    made or consisting of lace

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Turkish5.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Kanten in Turkish.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Kanten 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.

Where Kanten is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy≈120 est.≈1 in 523K—Kanten1
US United States≈110 est.≈1 in 3.1M—Kanten70
NO Norway781 in 70K78Kanten5
NL Netherlands≈57 est.≈1 in 303K—Kanten14
IN India≈44 est.≈1 in 30M—Kanten1
TN Tunisia≈40 est.≈1 in 294K—Kanten1
CA Canada≈14 est.≈1 in 2.7M—Kanten10

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: SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Kanten is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Norwegian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Kantén

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Kantén

25 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Kanten is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite singular of kant

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, (of bread) crust; heel

    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)

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 3 sources across 1 country.

Official registers attesting Kanten
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—78#18,856

Reference works 2

  • 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

Where does the name Kanten come from?
made or consisting of lace Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What does the name Kanten mean?
In English, agar
In which country does Kanten have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 119 people named Kanten in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kanten.
Where is Kanten most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kanten is densest in Norway — about 1 in 70 thousand people — even though Italy holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Kanten?
In Norway, the national register counted 78 people named Kanten, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Kanten?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kanten

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Kanten”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kanten parses inside a full name →