Kattan
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Arabic: nickname from Hebrew katan ‘small’. As an Israeli name, in some cases it represents a translation of Ashkenazic Klein
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kətən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kattan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Syria than in any other country.
- SYSyria≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 97K
- USUnited States1 in 655K
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.
- Syria (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 86 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,900 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Syria, 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)
nickname from Hebrew katan ‘small’. As an Israeli name, in some cases it represents a translation of Ashkenazic Klein.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kattan is read(measured from records)
Kattan 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.
- Arabic32%
nickname from Hebrew katan ‘small’. As an Israeli name, in some cases it represents a translation of Ashkenazic Klein.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
perhaps from qutn ‘cotton’, a metonymic occupational name for a cotton merchant.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English27%
The waste selvage in silk weaving, used for stringing ornaments.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish15%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kattan in Spanish.
- Turkish8.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kattan 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)
Kattan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SY Syria | #289 | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Kattan | 28 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Kattan | 66 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈870 est. | ≈1 in 120K | — | Kattan | 34 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈850 est. | ≈1 in 97K | — | Kattan | 17 |
| JO Jordan | — | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Kattan | 29 |
| US United States | — | 508 | 1 in 655K | 618 | Kattan | 86 |
| HN Honduras | #539 | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Kattan | 32 |
| LB Lebanon | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Kattan | 11 |
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)
Kattan is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Aleppo, Petrópolis, São Paulo, Ciudad de Mexico, Buenos Aires, Maroc, Israel, Lebanon; pequeño / small
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Hungarian, to click (to make one short clicking sound)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, definite singular of katta
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)
- Naïm Kattanb. 1928IQCanadian writer (1928-2021)
- Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd ʿAzīz al-Qaṭṭānb. 1946KWnot in their usual nameKuwaiti Muslim missionary
- Hanan Kattanb. 1962JOBritish film producer
- Emmanuel Kattanb. 1968CACanadian philosopher
- Chris Kattanb. 1970USAmerican actor and comedian (born 1970)
- Rolando Kattanb. 1979HNHonduran poet
- Huda Kathanb. 1983USnot in their usual nameCEO of Huda Beauty
- Hamza Kattanb. 1997JOJordanian taekwondoin
- Sarah Rita KattanLBLebanese scout leader
- Leo BacchusLBnot in their usual nameLebanese pornographic 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 27 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 618 | #38,554 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 508 | #42,640 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 431 | #46,523 |
| 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
- 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
- What does the name Kattan mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname from Hebrew katan ‘small’. As an Israeli name, in some cases it represents a translation of Ashkenazic Klein. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kattan?
- A machine transcription gives /kətən/ (IPA) for Arabic.
- In which country does Kattan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.9 thousand people named Kattan in Syria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kattan.
- How common is the name Kattan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 508 people named Kattan in 2010, about 1 in 655 thousand residents.
- How common is Kattan compared with other names?
- In Syria, Kattan is the 289th most common surname of 190,062 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kattan?
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/kattanThe 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, “Kattan” — the 289th most common surname in Syria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.