Yan
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: One
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Yan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common given name.
- CZCzechia1 in 18as Jan(measured from records)
- RORomania1 in 48as Ioan
- IEIreland≈1 in 53as John
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 Yan 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #6 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 731 (measured from records)
- 1 in 18 (inferred from the name graph)
3,125,123 named John, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia, as Jan
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled John in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines and 2 more, Jan in CZ Czechia, Ioan in RO Romania and Ион in MD Moldova.
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)
nonstandard spelling of yān
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 32 languages in the etymology graph.
How Yan is read(measured from records)
Yan is one spelling over 5 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.
- English28%
One.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Chinese23%
nonstandard spelling of yān
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese11%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Yan in Portuguese.
- Spanish6.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Yan in Spanish.
- French5.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Yan in French.
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)
Yan 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 | #3 | 3,125,123as John | 1 in 106 | 3.1M | John | 731 |
| NG Nigeria | #11 | ≈1,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 177 | — | John | 190 |
| GB United Kingdom | #1 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 59 | 1.1K | John | 496 |
| PH Philippines | #3 | ≈750,000 est. | ≈1 in 145 | listed | John | 261 |
| CZ Czechia | #1 | 587,876as Jan | 1 in 18 | 588K | Jan | 233 |
| RO Romania | #151 | 447,697as Ioan | 1 in 48 | 448K | Ioan | 96 |
| MD Moldova | #332 | 100,110as Ion | 1 in 34 | 100K | Ион | 50 |
| IE Ireland | #1 | ≈98,000 est. | ≈1 in 53 | — | John | 245 |
3,125,123 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); MVČR — living population register 2017; DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; e-services.md — living population register. 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)
Yan 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.
‘Gorgeous’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In German, männl. Vom., seit den i98oer-Jahren gelegentlich vorkommende Schreibvariante von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In och, The appearance of a face, face, countenance, color
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In Iloko, place, location, situation, locality, spot, position
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Emperor Wu of Jinb. 236CNnot in their usual nameEmperor of the Jin Dynasty from 266 to 290
- Emperor Wuzong of Tangb. 814not in their usual nameemperor of the Tang Dynasty
- Yan Gamarnikb. 1894UASoviet general (1894-1937)
- Yan Frenkelb. 1924UAUkrainian composer (1920-1989)
- Yan Pascal Tortelierb. 1947FRFrench conductor and violinist
- Mo Yanb. 1955CNChinese novelist and screenwriter
- Tiffany Tangb. 1983CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Yan Valeryb. 1999FRTunisian-French footballer (born 1999)
- Yan Coutob. 2002BRBrazilian footballer (born 2002)
- Yan D.Temandeb. 2006CIIvorian footballer
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 90 sources across 48 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 17K | #2,105 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,182 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8K | #4,091 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #277,157 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- How do you pronounce Yan?
- A machine transcription gives /jæn/ (IPA) for English.
- Where does the name Yan come from?
- nonstandard spelling of yān Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Yan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.1 million people named John, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Yan most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Yan itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Czechia's: the national register counts about 1 in 18 people named Jan.
- What does the name Yan mean?
- In English, One.
- Is Yan a male or female name?
- Yan is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Yan?
- In the etymology graph, Ivan, Ioan and Yoan are forms of the same name in other languages; Ivo and Yanko are recorded short or pet forms.
- How common is the name Yan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,125,123 people named John in 2020, about 1 in 106 residents.
- How common is Yan compared with other names?
- In the United States, Yan is the 3rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yan?
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/yanThe 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, “Yan” — the 3rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.