Potanin
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/pɐˈtanʲɪn/(recorded in a dictionary) Russian · from Wiktionary · read from потанин
Potanin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Russian Потанин (Potanin).
- EEEstonia≈1 in 410K(inferred from the name graph)
- PLPoland1 in 3.8M
- RURussia≈1 in 44Kas Потанин
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Potanin itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 124 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 409K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,300 named Потанин, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Потанин in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, KG Kyrgyzstan and Потанін in UA Ukraine.
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)Borrowed from Russian Потанин (Potanin).
Cited for this meaning 1
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Potanin 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 44K | listed | Потанин | 124 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 203K | — | Потанін | 12 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 117K | 257 | Потанин | 28 |
| US United States | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 26M | listed | Potanin | 27 |
| KG Kyrgyzstan | ≈10 est. | ≈1 in 709K | — | Потанин | 7 |
| PL Poland | 10 | 1 in 3.8M | 10 | — | 1 |
| EE Estonia | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 409K | listed | — | 2 |
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 russian-surnames-unbegaun-1972 register; 2021 National Population Census — popular surnames of Russians, by region of residence; the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; 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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Potanin is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A transliteration of the Russian surname Пота́нин (Potánin)
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)- Nikolay Potaninb. 1801KZexplorer
- Grigory Potaninb. 1835KZRussian explorer and orientalist (1835-1920)
- Viktor Potaninb. 1937RUSoviet writer
- Valeriy Potaninb. 1954RUactor
- Vladimir Potaninb. 1961RURussian billionaire
- Iryna Potaninab. 1979UAnot in their usual nameUkrainian writer and children's writer
- Olena Potaninab. 1987RUnot in their usual nameUkrainian journalist
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)7 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 10 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 10 | #137,261 |
| RU Russia | Russian Surnames (Unbegaun, 1972) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Potanin mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Russian Потанин (Potanin). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Potanin?
- In Russian /pɐˈtanʲɪn/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Potanin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.3 thousand people named Потанин in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Potanin?
- In Poland, the national register counted 10 people named Potanin in 2026, about 1 in 3.8 million residents.
What do you want to know about Potanin?
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/potaninThe 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, “Potanin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.