Shahan

surname · Latin script

Meaning: kings; pl. of Shah oLs, king’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ˈʃæhən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Shahan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 88K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 200K
  • NONorway1 in 304K

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)

3,772 people, 2010

Sources
51 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 88K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

kings; pl. of Shah oLs, king.’

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of Muslim Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Shahan 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.

Where Shahan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3,7721 in 88K3.8KShahan44
SE Sweden511 in 200K51—1
PL Poland351 in 1.1M21——
NO Norway181 in 304K40—2
IN India131 in 102M13Shahan51

3,772 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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Shahan is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Shāhān

  • Bangla surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Bangladesh, India, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Shãhâñ

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Shåhâñ

  • Ukrainian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Russia

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Polish

    Also written Шаан, Shaan

43 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Shahan 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 Arabic, kings; plural of Shah, king

    as a nameA Dictionary of Muslim Names

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)

185019001950Thomas Joseph Shahan, b. 1857Paul Shahan, b. 1923Robert R. Shahan, b. 1939

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)

FormalDear Shahan,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 39 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Shahan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.8K#8,704
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.5K#8,748
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203K#10,158
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—89#4,024
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—51#12,476
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202621—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—21#88,116
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—18#45,301
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202614—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—14#112,562
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—13#102,721
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)

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 Shahan mean, and where does it come from?
kings; pl. of Shah oLs, king.’ Recorded by A Dictionary of Muslim Names.
How do you pronounce Shahan?
A machine transcription gives /ˈʃæhən/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Shahan have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.8 thousand people named Shahan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled shahan.
Where is Shahan most common?
Shahan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 88 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Shahan?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,772 people named Shahan in 2010, about 1 in 88 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Shahan?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shahan

The 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, “Shahan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Shahan parses inside a full name →