Annan

surname · Akan · Latin script

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

Annan is a surname, most frequently recorded in Ghana. In Marshall Islands it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Akan and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: person from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway; ‘place by the water’.

rarermore common
  • GHGhana1 in 6.8K◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 137K
  • USUnited States1 in 327K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈1.2K ●

across 11 countries

Sources
231 ●

13K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 164K ◐

Finland

Meaning & origin●

person from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway; ‘place by the water’

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Annan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GH Ghana#1642,0511.2K rec.—84KAnnan72
GB United Kingdom—1,6991.3K rec.—listedAnnan101
US United States—1,0177.5K rec.1 in 327K1.3KAnnan231
AU Australia—591606 rec.—1Annan62
CA Canada—285289 rec.——Annan50
DE Germany—190183 rec.——Annan48
MH Marshall Islands#5156756 rec.——Annan1
IT Italy—155160 rec.—1Annan10
NZ New Zealand—15391 rec.——Annan34
PH Philippines—103131 rec.——Annan8
NG Nigeria—88117 rec.——Annan20
ES Spain—5453 rec.1 in 926K54—13

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Akan84K81%
  • English12K12%
  • Swahili9821%
  • Arabic9361%
  • Spanish8931%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Akan83,96981%
English12,28512%
Swahili9821%
Arabic9361%
Spanish8931%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Annan is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname1.5K records spelled Annan3 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

  • Spanish surname1.4K records spelled Annan4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Spain, Ghana

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Annañ, Annán

  • Chinese surname357 records spelled Annan2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Ghana, New Zealand

    Also written An-Nan

54 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●

Annan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, From Annan in Dumfriesshire; found from the 13th century, with William de Anand in 1249.

    as a nameScottish Surnames

  • In English, city, Scotland

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • Very fast, a

    as a nameDictionary of Islamic Names

  • In Icelandic, accusative masculine singular of annar (“other”)

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

  • In Swedish, other, (idiomatically, sometimes) else, (when not used as a determiner) (an)other one

    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.

Over time●

024682005201020152020

Show as table
Annan in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 2001–2020
Yearrecords
20015
20036
20065
20085
20105
20207

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 6 years between 2001–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Thomas Annan, b. 1829James Craig Annan, b. 1864Beulah Annan, b. 1899Kofi Annan, b. 1938Nane Annan, b. 1944Richard Annan, b. 1968Kojo Annan, b. 1973Alyson Annan, b. 1973Christian Annan, b. 1978Anthony Annan, b. 1986

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●

Attested in 36 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Annan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GH GhanaGhana top-100 surnames (surnam.es)—84K#36
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.3K#21,162
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101K#24,572
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000733#30,161
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020132#37,938
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202072#37,938
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—62#5,161
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—54#42,418
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—54#42,040
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—34#36,223
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—32—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)199125—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 78 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Annan?
We estimate roughly 1.2 thousand people bear Annan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Annan have the most bearers?
Annan is most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is most often spelled annan.
How common is Annan compared with other names?
In Ghana, Annan is the 164th most common surname of 34,696 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Annan mean?
Recorded meaning: person from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway; ‘place by the water’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/annan

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Annan” — the 164th most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Annan parses inside a full name →