Nguyen
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Nguyen is a surname, most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is the most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Vietnamese, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty.
- AOAngola1 in 194◐
- AUAustralia1 in 429
- CACanada1 in 738
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈489K ●
- #1 ●
- Sources
- 506 ●
- 1 in 361 ◐
across 13 countries
of 21M surnames
9.6M records
Official registry-verified
Norway
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Nguyễn in VN Vietnam.
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●
unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VN Vietnam | #1 | 165,562,089 | 5.3M rec. | — | 39M | Nguyễn | 331 |
| US United States | #30 | 437,645 | 3.4M rec. | 1 in 760 | 531K | Nguyen | 506 |
| AU Australia | #11 | 196,442 | 174K rec. | — | 3 | Nguyen | 288 |
| GB United Kingdom | #76 | 166,888 | 187K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 155 |
| CA Canada | #19 | 101,495 | 102K rec. | — | 1 | Nguyen | 198 |
| DE Germany | #90 | 52,131 | 49K rec. | — | 1 | Nguyen | 215 |
| SV El Salvador | #113 | 45,406 | 49K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 11 |
| NO Norway | — | 15,162△ | 2.4K rec. | 1 in 361 | 15K | Nguyen | 88 |
| IT Italy | #126 | 10,196 | 12K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 64 |
| AO Angola | #2 | 9,988 | 14K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 9 |
| RU Russia | — | 9,216 | 11K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 55 |
| MY Malaysia | #420 | 8,320 | 4.9K rec. | — | — | Nguyen | 47 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English80M86%
- Vietnamese9.8M11%
- 1.2M1%
- Spanish366K1%
- French233K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 79,906,673 | 86% |
| Vietnamese | 9,815,899 | 11% |
| 1,182,720 | 1% | |
| Spanish | 365,955 | 1% |
| French | 232,870 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Nguyen 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 English, Vietnamese surname of unknown origin
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1975 | 8 |
| 1976 | 10 |
| 1977 | 10 |
| 1979 | 9 |
| 1980 | 17 |
| 1981 | 15 |
| 1982 | 19 |
| 1983 | 19 |
| 1984 | 11 |
| 1985 | 10 |
| 1986 | 15 |
| 1987 | 17 |
| 1988 | 17 |
| 1990 | 16 |
| 1991 | 15 |
| 1992 | 18 |
| 1993 | 13 |
| 1994 | 9 |
| 1995 | 18 |
| 1996 | 10 |
| 1997 | 7 |
| 1998 | 10 |
| 1999 | 10 |
| 2000 | 14 |
| 2001 | 12 |
| 2002 | 8 |
| 2003 | 8 |
| 2004 | 9 |
| 2005 | 10 |
| 2006 | 7 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2009 | 13 |
| 2010 | 8 |
| 2011 | 6 |
| 2012 | 8 |
| 2013 | 5 |
| 2014 | 6 |
| 2015 | 10 |
| 2016 | 6 |
| 2017 | 6 |
| 2018 | 7 |
| 2019 | 6 |
| 2020 | 5 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 5 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | 5 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 47 years between 1975–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Gia Longb. 1762VNnot in their usual namefounder and 1st emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty of Vietnam (r. 1802-04)
- Ho Chi Minhb. 1890VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese communist leader, founder of North Vietnam (1890–1969)
- Thích Quảng Đứcb. 1897VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese monk who self-immolated in 1963
- Nguyễn Văn Linhb. 1915VNGeneral secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1915–1998)
- Đỗ Mườib. 1917VNnot in their usual nameformer General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1917–2018)
- Nguyễn Văn Thiệub. 1923USpresident of South Vietnam from 1965–75
- Nguyễn Minh Triếtb. 1942VNSixth President of Vietnam (2006-2011)
- Nguyễn Phú Trọngb. 1944VNGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (top leader) from 2011 to 2024
- Nguyễn Tấn Dũngb. 1949VNPrime Minister of Vietnam
- Nguyễn Xuân Phúcb. 1954VNformer President of Vietnam
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 63 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 531K | #29 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 438K | #38 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 310K | #57 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 15K | #38 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 7.6K | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 7.5K | #475 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 6.2K | #151 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5.1K | #68 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4.8K | #124 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 4.3K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.2K | #3,164 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3.3K | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 · 279 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Nguyen?
- We estimate roughly 489 thousand people bear Nguyen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
- In which country does Nguyen have the most bearers?
- Nguyen is most frequently recorded in Vietnam, where it is most often spelled nguyễn.
- How common is Nguyen compared with other names?
- In Vietnam, Nguyen is the most common surname of 58,673 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Nguyen mean?
- Recorded meaning: unexplained. This was the family name of a major Vietnamese royal dynasty.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nguyenThe 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
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, “Nguyen” — the most common surname in Vietnam. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.