Khan

surname · Hindi · Latin script

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

Khan is a surname, most frequently recorded in Bangladesh, where it is the 9th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Hindi and , written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman”.

rarermore common
  • PKPakistan1 in 21◐
  • SASaudi Arabia1 in 37
  • AEUnited Arab Emirates1 in 50

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

≈1.6M ●

across 8 countries

#60 ●

of 21M surnames

6 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
459 ●

5.9M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 104 ◐

Guyana

Spellings & scripts●

KhanLatin · Hindi●7.8M records
ХонCyrillic · Russian●14K records
খানBengali · Bangla●11K records
คนาThai · Thai●755 records
ଖାନOdia · Odia●16 records
ਖਾਨGurmukhi · Punjabi●1 records

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Хон in RU Russia and Cuña in UY Uruguay.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman”

Sources 1

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

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Khan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BD Bangladesh#94,765,785128K rec.—listedKhan207
PK Pakistan#32,360,566231K rec.—listedKhan206
IN India#141,485,3484.4M rec.1 in 8931.5MKhan303
SA Saudi Arabia#1250,10552K rec.——Khan168
GB United Kingdom#61198,136108K rec.—listedKhan237
US United States#36376,171637K rec.1 in 4.4K102KKhan459
AE United Arab Emirates#171,06367K rec.——Khan192
MY Malaysia#6749,82037K rec.——Khan85
AU Australia#17140,87942K rec.—4Khan243
CA Canada#10737,77436K rec.—1Khan180
TT Trinidad & Tobago#419,859347 rec.——Khan51
QA Qatar#218,80019K rec.——Khan100

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

Languages●

  • Hindi7.8M33%
  • 4.3M18%
  • Urdu3.4M15%
  • English3.3M14%
  • Bangla3.1M13%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hindi7,781,14733%
4,314,64018%
Urdu3,446,23115%
English3,347,50814%
Bangla3,068,49413%

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◐

Khan is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname4.4M records spelled Khan25 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Khan', Khān, K̲h̲ān, K̲h̲ān̲, Ḵẖān

  • Assamese surname202K records spelled Khan2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written খান

  • Spanish surname189K records spelled Khan145 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, India

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Khäñ, Khâñ, Khän, Khåñ, Khãñ

  • Indonesian surname178K records spelled Khan25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay, Malagasy

    Also written Ķhäņ, Khâñ, Ķhäñ, Khàñ, Khãņ

  • Thai surname54K records spelled Khan200 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, India, Pakistan, United States

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written คล, ขันตี, ขันติ, Kanti, คลี

92 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●

Khan 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.

  • from a personal name or status name based on Turkish khan ‘ruler’, ‘nobleman’. This was originally a hereditary title among Tartar and Mongolian tribesmen (in particular Genghis Khan, 1162-1227), but is now very widely used throughout the Muslim world as a personal name. In Iran and parts of the Indian subcontinent it is used as an honorific title after a person’s personal name.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, A ruler over various Turkic and Mongol peoples in the Middle Ages.

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

  • In English, Asian title. Cen. Asian people

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Arabic, khan; ruler, lord

    as a nameAfrican Muslim Names

  • Príncipe

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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●

05K10K15K1920194019601980200011K · 1980

Show as table
Khan in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1915–2017
Yearrecords
19151
1918143
191925
192039
192138
192241
192395
192473
1925135
192672
192782
1928220
1929144
1930331
1931190
1932218
1933407
1934315
1935664
1936365
1937339
1938628
1939472
19401,086
1941639
1942726
1943967
1944839
19451,387
19461,083
19471,080
19481,830
19491,552
19501,828
19511,637
19521,600
19532,366
19541,856
19553,406
19562,096
19572,209
19583,995
19592,840
19604,154
19613,354
19623,932
19634,354
19644,159
19656,608
19663,642
19674,443
19687,073
19695,010
19708,272
19716,064
19727,351
19736,505
19747,240
19759,666
19766,250
19777,244
19789,234
19797,949
198010,586
19819,332
198210,188
19837,529
19847,920
19858,431
19869,664
19879,484
198810,060
19899,576
19909,285
19918,880
19927,058
19938,444
19947,832
19955,833
19964,190
19973,642
1998983
19999
200883
2009126
2010275
20111,114
2012952
20131,729
2014596
20152,342
201723

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 92 years between 1915–2017. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Abdur Rahman Khan, b. 1840Muhammad Ayub Khan, b. 1907Fazlur Khan, b. 1929Imran Khan, b. 1952Michelle Yeoh, b. 1962Shah Rukh Khan, b. 1965Irrfan Khan, b. 1967Saif Ali Khan, b. 1970Sadiq Khan, b. 1970Kareena Kapoor, b. 1980

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 91 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Khan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—1.5M#15
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020102K#303
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201076K#427
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200047K#665
GY GuyanaGuyana — Official List of Electors July 202520257.2K#4
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—7K#106
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—6.3K#862
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—6.3K#862
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—4.8K#198
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20253.5K—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—3K#124
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—2.3K#393

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 494 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Khan?
We estimate roughly 1.6 million people bear Khan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Khan have the most bearers?
Khan is most frequently recorded in Bangladesh, where it is most often spelled khan.
How common is Khan compared with other names?
In Bangladesh, Khan is the 9th most common surname of 11,292 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Khan mean?
Recorded meaning: from a Muslim personal name meaning literally “ruler” or “nobleman”
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/khan

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, “Khan” — the 9th most common surname in Bangladesh. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Khan parses inside a full name →