Naan
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A type of round, flat bread baked in a tandoor popular in South and Central Asian cuisine
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: CBG Familienamenbank, 2007
/nˈɑːn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Naan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- EEEstonia≈1 in 705K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 1.6M
- BRBrazil1 in 1.8M
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.
- Brazil (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 25 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 705K (inferred from the name graph)
119 people, 2022
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)A type of round, flat bread baked in a tandoor popular in South and Central Asian cuisine.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Naan is read
(measured from records)Naan is one spelling over 5 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.
- Hindi17%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Naan in Hindi.
- English15%
A type of round, flat bread baked in a tandoor popular in South and Central Asian cuisine.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese7.5%
naan (Asian type of flat bread)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish6.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Naan in Spanish.
- Arabic6.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Naan in Arabic.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Naan 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | 119 | 1 in 1.8M | 119 | Naan | 25 |
| US United States | ≈29 est. | ≈1 in 11M | listed | Naan | 5 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | 6 | — | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 14M | 25 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 705K | 20 | — | — |
119 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)Naan is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In dag, marker for condition or KO see na Comment hypoth., ‘would’
as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD
In Finnish, naan (bread)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In stq, no, none
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Wolof, to drink
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)- Gustav Naanb. 1919EEEstonian philosopher and physicist (1919-1994)
- Mattias Naanb. 1986EEEstonian film editor and comedian (born 1986)
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)13 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 25 | #78,618 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 23 | #177,962 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 20 | #5,647 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 16 | #6,913 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 6 | #73,189 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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
- What does the name Naan mean, and where does it come from?
- A type of round, flat bread baked in a tandoor popular in South and Central Asian cuisine. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Naan?
- A machine transcription gives /nˈɑːn/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- Is Naan a male or female name?
- Naan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Brazil (Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)).
- In which country does Naan have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 119 people named Naan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled naan.
- How common is the name Naan?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 119 people named Naan in 2022, about 1 in 1.8 million residents.
What do you want to know about Naan?
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/naanThe 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, “Naan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.