Yán
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Yán 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. Recorded meaning: Along with ane and yen, a Northumbrian form of one, from the Old English ān. An example is "yan, twee, tree, fower" for "one, two, three, four".
- 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 Yán 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)
Along with ane and yen, a Northumbrian form of one, from the Old English ān. An example is "yan, twee, tree, fower" for "one, two, three, four".
Sources 9
- A concise dictionary of first names
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- Wiktionary
- Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
- YorùbáName Dictionary
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Yán 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)
Yán 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 Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin reading of 言, 讠
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)
- Wei Yanb. 200CNState of Shu Han general (died 234)
- 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
- Mo Yanb. 1955CNChinese novelist and screenwriter
- Wang Yanb. 1971CNChinese racewalker
- Chen Yanb. 1981CNChinese swimmer (1981-)
- Zhou Yanb. 1982CNChinese curler
- Bi Yanb. 1984CNAssociation footballer
- Wu Jinyanb. 1990CNnot in their usual nameChinese actress
- Wang Yanb. 1999CNgymnast
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)
No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Yán mean, and where does it come from?
- Along with ane and yen, a Northumbrian form of one, from the Old English ān. An example is "yan, twee, tree, fower" for "one, two, three, four". Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen and 7 other sources.
- Is Yán a male or female name?
- Yán 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.
- In which country does Yán 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 Yán most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Yán itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Czechia's: the national register counts about 1 in 18 people named Jan.
- How common is the name Yán?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,125,123 people named John in 2020, about 1 in 106 residents.
- How common is Yán compared with other names?
- In the United States, Yán is the 3rd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Yán?
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/y%C3%A1nThe 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, “Yán” — the 3rd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.