Megan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Margaret form with -an diminutive; no dated cite given
A female name· listed as female by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 50 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/meɪɡən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Megan is a female given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 738(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 811
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.4K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #379 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 621 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 738 (inferred from the name graph)
409,941 people, 2020
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Australia, 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)Margaret form with -an diminutive; no dated cite given.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Welsh Surnames
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Megan, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Megan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #157 | 409,941 | 1 in 811 | 409K | Megan | 621 |
| GB United Kingdom | #224 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 8 | Megan | 332 |
| AU Australia | #104 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 738 | 78 | Megan | 295 |
| CA Canada | #182 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 6 | Megan | 308 |
| ZA South Africa | #348 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Megan | 154 |
| NZ New Zealand | #166 | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 12 | Megan | 176 |
409,941 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)Megan 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.
A variant of Margaret. Melaghlin [Maeleachlainn] (m) ‘servant of St Secundinus’. Melaghlin is the true English form of Maeleachlainn, but Malachy was commonly used to translate it, and at present it seems to have 85 Melanie completely replaced it. Miles was occasionally used as a translation.
as a nameIrish first names
1. with the stress on the first syllable, this is an Anglicized form of Gaelic Meighan, which, according to MacLysaght, is usually a variant of Meehan or occasionally of Megahan. 2. with the stress on the second syllable, a variant of McGahan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A diminutive of the female given name Margaret, from Welsh.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Irish, Variant of Margaret.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, a pearl
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
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)- Megan Mullallyb. 1958USAmerican actress
- Megan Doddsb. 1970USAmerican actress
- Megan McArthurb. 1971USNASA astronaut
- Megan Booneb. 1983USAmerican actress
- Megan Fergusonb. 1983USAmerican film actor
- Megan Rapinoeb. 1985USAmerican soccer player (born 1985)
- Megan Foxb. 1986USAmerican actress and model (born 1986)
- Megan Parkb. 1986CACanadian actress
- Chelsea Greenb. 1991CAnot in their usual nameCanadian professional wrestler
- Megan Charpentierb. 2001CAAmerican-Canadian actress
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)93 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 50 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 409K | #114 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 455 | #114 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 301 | — |
| AU Australia | NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present) | 2004 | 78 | #91 |
| AU Australia | QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present) | 2002 | 47 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 39 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 2018 | 10 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 8 | #384 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 6 | #675 |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 1995 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- How do you pronounce Megan?
- A machine transcription gives /meɪɡən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Megan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 410 thousand people named Megan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled megan.
- What does the name Megan mean, and where does it come from?
- Margaret form with -an diminutive; no dated cite given. Recorded by Welsh Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Megan?
- In the etymology graph, Rita, Margarita and Marguerite are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Meg.
- How common is the name Megan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 409,941 people named Megan in 2020, about 1 in 811 residents.
- How common is Megan compared with other names?
- In the United States, Megan is the 157th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- Is Megan a male or female name?
- Megan is a female name. National registers that list it by sex list it as female: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Netherlands (Meertens NVB), France (INSEE, 2019) and Ecuador (INEC, 2024), among others.
What do you want to know about Megan?
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/meganThe 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, “Megan” — the 157th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.