Pennant
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from pen y nant 'head of the valley'; earliest cited Henry VIII: Dd Pennant (Flints)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈpɛnənt/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Pennant is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- JMJamaica≈1 in 21Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 180K
- CRCosta Rica1 in 196K
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)
- Record sources
- 170 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)
431 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Jamaica, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from pen y nant 'head of the valley'; earliest cited Henry VIII: Dd Pennant (Flints).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Welsh Surnames
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Pennant is found
(measured from records)Pennant 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 | 431 | 1 in 772K | 533 | Pennant | 170 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 180K | 485 | Pennant | 102 |
| GT Guatemala | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 125K | — | Pennant | 6 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Pennant | 9 |
| CA Canada | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 463K | — | Pennant | 43 |
| LS Lesotho | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Pennant | 1 |
| CR Costa Rica | 26 | 1 in 196K | 26 | Pennant | 5 |
431 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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)Pennant 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 Welsh, From pennant; earliest cited 1292 (Craddoc Bentan; Deicws ap Penntan 1406).
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In English, residential surname from the estate name; adopted in the 16th–early 17th c.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
Panntur above. B13. 226. SR 1292. Craddoc Bentan, ipentan, 'fireside hob'). B15. 59. AS 1406. Deicws ap Penntan. (var. Pwntan). Penath u. Bennet
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In English, A flag normally used by naval vessels to represent a special condition.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, from Pennant, Flintshire
as a nameWelsh Surnames
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)- Thomas Pennantb. 1726GBWelsh naturalist (1726-1798)
- Selvin Pennantb. 1950GTGuatemalan footballer
- Jermaine Pennantb. 1983GBEnglish association football player
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)9 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pennant mean, and where does it come from?
- from pen y nant 'head of the valley'; earliest cited Henry VIII: Dd Pennant (Flints). Recorded by Welsh Surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Pennant?
- In the etymology graph, Pennon is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Pennant?
- In English /ˈpɛnənt/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Pennant?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 431 people named Pennant, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pennant. After it come United Kingdom, Guatemala, Jamaica and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Pennant?
- In the United States, the national register counted 431 people named Pennant in 2010, about 1 in 772 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pennant?
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/pennantThe 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, “Pennant”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.