Nankin
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Obsolete form of Nanking, former name of Nanjing: a prefecture-level city, the capital of Jiangsu, China
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɲæɲcɪn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nankin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 2.6M(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 19M
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)
- Sources
- 50 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.6M (inferred from the name graph)
130 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Obsolete form of Nanking, former name of Nanjing: a prefecture-level city, the capital of Jiangsu, China.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nankin is read(measured from records)
Nankin is one spelling over 2 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.
- English76%
Obsolete form of Nanking, former name of Nanjing: a prefecture-level city, the capital of Jiangsu, China.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French8.5%
Nanjing (the capital city of Jiangsu, China)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Nankin 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 | 130 | 1 in 2.6M | 139 | — | 3 |
| PL Poland | 2 | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
| FR France | — | — | 13 | Nankin | 50 |
130 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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Michael Nankinb. 1955USAmerican screenwriter
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 9 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 139 | #116,123 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 130 | #130,610 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 117 | #144,270 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 13 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 11 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 3 | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Nankin mean, and where does it come from?
- Obsolete form of Nanking, former name of Nanjing: a prefecture-level city, the capital of Jiangsu, China. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Nankin?
- A machine transcription gives /ɲæɲcɪn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nankin have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 130 people named Nankin, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Nankin most common?
- Nankin is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.6 million people carrying it.
- How common is the name Nankin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 130 people named Nankin in 2010, about 1 in 2.6 million residents.
What do you want to know about Nankin?
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/nankinThe 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, “Nankin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.