Phan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A fan of the American rock band Phish
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/faːŋ˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Phan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Vietnam than in any other country, where it is the 8th most common surname.
- VNVietnam≈1 in 71(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 4.9K
- CACanada≈1 in 7.5K
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.
- Vietnam (inferred from the name graph)
- #767 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 429 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 71 (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,400,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Vietnam, est.
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)
A fan of the American rock band Phish.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Phan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #8 | ≈1,400,000 est. | ≈1 in 71 | 101 | Phan | 239 |
| US United States | #912 | 37,836 | 1 in 8.8K | 48K | Phan | 429 |
| AO Angola | #69 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Phan | 3 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 20K | listed | — | 4 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 573 | Phan | 127 |
| AU Australia | #419 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | 3 | Phan | 204 |
| CA Canada | #746 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.5K | — | Phan | 163 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,204 | 1 in 4.5K | 1.2K | Phan | 34 |
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: The page provides an analysis of the performance of Vietnamese surname lists in identifying Vietnamese individuals for r; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Phan 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 Welsh, aspirate mutation of pan
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, a surname from Hakka
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)
- Phan Bội Châub. 1867VN19/20th-century Vietnamese nationalist and revolutionary
- Phan Châu Trinhb. 1872VNVietnamese nationalist in the 20th century
- Márta Pánb. 1923HUnot in their usual namesculptor from Hungary and France (1923-2008)
- Phan Văn Khảib. 1933VNVietnamese politician (1933-2018)
- Phan Thị Kim Phúcb. 1963VNVietnamese–Canadian activist and photographic subject
- Pan Yuemingb. 1974CNnot in their usual nameChinese actor
- Mỹ Tâmb. 1981VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese singer-songwriter
- Jennifer Panb. 1986CAnot in their usual nameCanadian convicted murderer
- Pan Cheng-tsungb. 1991TWnot in their usual nameTaiwanese golfer (1991-)
- Pan Zhanleb. 2004CNnot in their usual nameChinese swimmer
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 50 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 48K | #693 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 38K | #918 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 27K | #1,193 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.2K | #900 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 602 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2024 | 593 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 573 | #10,199 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
| VN Vietnam | Vietnamese surnames (Kaggle) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname 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
- What does the name Phan mean, and where does it come from?
- A fan of the American rock band Phish. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Phan?
- A machine transcription gives /faːŋ˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- In which country does Phan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 million people named Phan in Vietnam, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled phan.
- How common is the name Phan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 37,836 people named Phan in 2010, about 1 in 8.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Phan compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Phan is the 8th most common surname of 62,915 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Phan?
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/phanThe 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, “Phan” — the 8th most common surname in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.