Wan

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Pale, sickly-looking

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

Wan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Malaysia than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 129(inferred from the name graph)
  • IDIndonesia≈1 in 2.1K
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 2.4K

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.

Malaysia (inferred from the name graph)

≈250,000 people, est.

Sources
168 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 129 (inferred from the name graph)

Malaysia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

How Wan is read(measured from records)

Wan is one spelling over 3 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.

  • Malay58%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Wan in Malay.

  • English24%

    Pale, sickly-looking.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Chinese6.7%

    nonstandard spelling of wān

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Wan 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 Wan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MY Malaysia#14≈250,000 est.≈1 in 1291.1KWan168
CN China—≈190,000 est.≈1 in 7.5K—Wan32
ID Indonesia#810≈120,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K—Wan124
HK Hong Kong#453≈8,200 est.≈1 in 879—Wan39
SG Singapore#329≈2,600 est.≈1 in 2.4K—Wan97
US United States—2,5991 in 128K7.4KWan133
BN Brunei#16≈650 est.≈1 in 713—Wan20

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: data.gov.my — Name Popularity Dashboard (JPN, by decade and ethnicity); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)

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

  • English given name31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German

    Also written Waen, Wàn, Wåñ, Wân, Wãn

  • Chinese given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan

    Also written Wàn

  • Korean given name20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Korea, United States, Malaysia, China

    Languages: Korean, Chinese

    Also written 완희, 완, 완호, 완우, 완회

  • Urdu given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Singapore, Pakistan

    Also written Wäń

88 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)

Wan is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • Indeterminately reserved ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code for Nigeria.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In kaw, Clear or plain; certain or fixed. Herd.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In ang, third-person singular of winnan

    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)

5001000150020002500Wang Wan, b. 693Kim Wan, b. 1961Wan Kuzain, b. 1998Junaidi Arif, b. 2002

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 62 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Wan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020207.4K#4,631
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.8K#5,911
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.6K#6,747

Reference works 7

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

Where does the name Wan come from?
from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
What does the name Wan mean?
In English, Pale, sickly-looking.
Is Wan a male or female name?
Wan is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
In which country does Wan have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 253 thousand people named Wan in Malaysia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wan.
How common is the name Wan?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,599 people named Wan in 2020, about 1 in 128 thousand residents.
How common is Wan compared with other names?
In Malaysia, Wan is the 14th most common given name of 388,685 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Wan?

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

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, “Wan” — the 14th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Wan parses inside a full name →