Kotan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: plough, plow
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kotan/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kotan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country.
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 7.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- CYCyprus≈1 in 156K
- EEEstonia≈1 in 234K
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.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 63 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 7.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Türkiye, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
plough, plow
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kotan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #794 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | Kotan | 63 |
| US United States | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 2M | listed | Kotan | 37 |
| FR France | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 574K | 15 | Kotan | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 53 | 1 in 326K | 53 | Kotan | 13 |
| IR Iran | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 4.1M | — | Kotan | 2 |
| CY Cyprus | — | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 156K | — | Kotan | 3 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 234K | listed | — | 2 |
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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Kotan 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 Russian, var of Katan.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Esperanto, accusative singular of kota
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, definite singular of kota
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In man, as soon as
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mwt, jungle
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Nafiz Kotanb. 1887TRTurkish philanthropist (1887–1946)
- Rıza Kotanb. 1890TRTurkish statesperson (1890–1951)
- Pejsach Kotanb. 1931PLHolocaust victim (born 1931)
- Orhan Kotanb. 1944TRTurkish politician of Kurdish ancestry (born 1944)
- Pavel Kotanb. 1950photographer
- Fatma Salmanb. 1970TRnot in their usual nameTurkish statesperson (born 1970)
- Ipek Kotanb. 1977TRTurkish ceramist (born 1977)
- Yiğit Kotanb. 2002TRTurkish association football player (born 2002)
- Emrah KotanTRTurkish musician
- Mustafa KotanTRTurkish film 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 16 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 53 | #29,754 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 17 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 15 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Kotan mean, and where does it come from?
- plough, plow Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kotan?
- A machine transcription gives /kotan/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- In which country does Kotan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Kotan in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kotan.
- How common is the name Kotan?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 53 people named Kotan in 2007, about 1 in 326 thousand residents.
- How common is Kotan compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Kotan is the 794th most common surname of 619,652 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kotan?
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/kotanThe 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, “Kotan” — the 794th most common surname in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.