Lacan

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in French: a surname from Occitan

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/lakɑ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Lacan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.5M(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 7.1M

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

219 people, 2010

Sources
66 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.5M (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

third-person plural present indicative of lacar

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

How Lacan is read(measured from records)

Lacan 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.

  • French73%

    a surname from Occitan

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

  • Spanish15%

    third-person plural present indicative of lacar

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

  • English9.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Lacan in English.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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

Lacan 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 Lacan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States2191 in 1.5M268Lacan66
ES Spain71 in 7.1M7——
GB United Kingdom———Lacan6
AU Australia———Lacan5
PH Philippines———Lacan3
DE Germany———Lacan10

219 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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)

Lacan is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Lacán

  • Croatian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States

    Also written Lačan, Laćan

  • Romanian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania

    Also written Lăcan

28 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)

Lacan 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 ang, to move about or up and down, like rolling water or flames; to soar, to wave, to sway

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

  • In Esperanto, accusative singular of laca

    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)

180018501900195020002050Ernest Lacan, b. 1828Jacques Lacan, b. 1901Marc-François Lacan, b. 1908Gérard Lacan, b. 1946Guy Lacan, b. 1954Muriel Lacan, b. 1967Leïla Lacan, b. 2004

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)

FormalMadame, Monsieur,Dear Lacan, (English)
InformalMadame, Monsieur,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Lacan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020268#77,203
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010219#85,357
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—7#143,513
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Lacan come from?
third-person plural present indicative of lacar Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Lacan?
A machine transcription gives /lakɑ̃/ (IPA) for French.
What does the name Lacan mean?
In French, a surname from Occitan
In which country does Lacan have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 219 people named Lacan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lacan.
Where is Lacan most common?
Lacan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.5 million people carrying it.
How common is the name Lacan?
In the United States, the national register counted 219 people named Lacan in 2010, about 1 in 1.5 million residents.

What do you want to know about Lacan?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

The 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, “Lacan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Lacan parses inside a full name →