Sebastian

given name · Spanish · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Sebastian is a given name, most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is the 2nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Spanish and Polish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia'.

rarermore common
  • CUCuba1 in 12◐
  • GTGuatemala1 in 16
  • CZCzechia1 in 18

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

≈11M ●

across 12 countries

#3 ●

of 16M given names

14 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
659 ●

100M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 18 ◐

Czechia

Spellings & scripts●

JohnLatin · English●47M records
ΙωαννηςGreek · Greek●989K records
יונהHebrew · Hebrew●95K records
ЯнисCyrillic · Russian●26K records
요한Hangul · Korean●18K records
ᲯონიGeorgian · Georgian●6.8K records
জীবনBengali · Bangla●3.8K records
ዮሐንስEthiopic · Amharic●831 records
โยฮันเนสThai · Thai●161 records
ଜୀବନOdia · Odia●15 records
ՅանArmenian · Armenian●8 records
JoࣩhnArabic · English●1 records
ജവാൻMalayalam · Malayalam●0 records
ජීවනSinhala · Sinhala●0 records

13 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Juan in AR Argentina, ES Spain, MX Mexico and 6 more, John in US United States, GB United Kingdom, PH Philippines and 5 more, Jan in PL Poland, CZ Czechia, DK Denmark and 1 more and Joao in BR Brazil.

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 the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia'

Sources 1

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

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Sebastian is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#212,961,3007.5M rec.—5.7KJuan239
MX Mexico#35,288,3114.2M rec.—4.7KJuan302
GB United Kingdom#14,533,2514M rec.—1.1KJohn396
BR Brazil#33,430,6084.4M rec.1 in 623.4MJoao248
PE Peru#43,194,6532.3M rec.—555KJuan176
US United States#23,118,62055M rec.1 in 1073.1MJohn659
VE Venezuela#82,400,453870K rec.—21KJuan160
GT Guatemala#32,227,734180K rec.—3.1KJuan142
PH Philippines#32,098,1301.4M rec.—listedJohn240
AU Australia#11,965,7301.7M rec.—570John410
CO Colombia#21,937,062665K rec.—1.2KJuan277
FR France#11,910,4004.1M rec.1 in 361.9MJean474

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

Languages●

  • Spanish4.9M65%
  • Polish934K13%
  • German544K7%
  • English338K5%
  • Portuguese94K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Spanish4,886,39465%
Polish934,09613%
German544,0007%
English337,8105%
Portuguese94,1111%

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◐

Sebastian is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish given name1.0M records spelled Sebastian93 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Czechia, Croatia, United States

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Sebastijan, Sebastien, Себастьян, Себастіан, Себастиан

  • Hindi given name80K records spelled Sebastian27 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Sebastián, সেবাস্তিয়ান, Sebastiàn, Sèbastìan, Sebastían

  • Finnish given name80K records spelled Sebastian5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, United States

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Sebastián, Sebástian, Sébastian

  • Catalan given name53K records spelled Sebastian3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Argentina

    Also written Sebastián, Sebastían

  • a separate given name30K records spelled Sebastian7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, India, Ecuador, Spain

    Also written Sebastián, Sébastian, Sebastían, Sebastiàn, Sebástian

  • Malayalam given name22K records spelled Sebastian8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Sebastien, സെബാസ്റ്റ്യൻ, Sébastien, Sebastan, സെബാസററയൻ

  • Romanian given name19K records spelled Sebastian4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Romania, Moldova, United States, Spain

    Also written Sebastián

85 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●

Sebastian 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, Venerable man from Sebasta; name of a 3rd-century saint.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In German, Patronym zu Rufname Sebastian. Bearer count: 1265.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen

  • In English, A man from Sebasta; name of a 3rd-century saint.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • From Latin Sebastianus, the name of a 3rd-century saint, a Roman soldier martyred by the arrows of his fellow officers. His sufferings were a favourite subject for medieval artists. The name means ‘man from Sebasté’, a city in Asia Minor so called from Greek sebastos ‘august’, ‘venerable’, used as a translation of the Latin imperial title Augustus. Short forms: Seb.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In German, Sedlak Czech: occupational or status name for a peasant or Sebastianus, originally an ethnic name meaning ‘man from farmer, Czech sedlak, the equivalent of Ger. Bauer. A Sedov sedlak was a comparatively rich farmer, with more land than a zahradnik (smallholder) or a chaloupnik (cotter). Dim.: Czech: Sedlacek.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

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●

05K10K15K19001950200010K · 2016

Show as table
Sebastian in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1881–2025
Yearrecords
18816
188210
18855
18867
18896
189211
18945
18958
18965
18988
18996
19018
19025
190311
19049
190510
19065
190712
190815
190914
191014
191120
191251
191363
191482
1915112
1916134
1917122
1918114
1919126
1920139
1921130
1922127
1923130
1924137
1925108
1926131
1927104
1928128
192997
1930113
193194
193287
193375
193481
193579
193665
193762
193865
193953
194051
194160
194277
194360
194447
194547
194655
194756
194870
194951
195042
195144
195251
195352
195447
195556
195642
195750
195863
195953
196069
1961105
1962151
1963109
1964129
1965104
196699
1967115
1968116
1969116
1970165
1971188
1972155
1973129
1974125
1975127
1976124
1977120
1978143
1979137
1980168
1981175
1982220
1983192
1984242
1985288
1986281
1987354
1988397
1989522
1990790
19911,033
19921,296
19931,308
19941,304
19951,435
19961,590
19971,768
19981,697
19992,378
20005,029
20014,979
20025,137
20034,649
20044,521
20054,956
20066,287
20076,274
20086,041
20095,993
20106,366
20116,551
20126,744
20137,553
20149,315
20159,632
201610,309
201710,197
201810,137
20199,884
20209,029
20218,932
20229,403
20238,892
20248,593
20258,605

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 136 years between 1881–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

16001700180019002000Johann Sebastian Bach, b. 1685Sebastián Piñera, b. 1949Rowan Atkinson, b. 1955Sebastian Coe, b. 1956Lionel Scaloni, b. 1978Nicolas Anelka, b. 1979Sébastien Ogier, b. 1983Sébastien Lecornu, b. 1986Sebastian Kurz, b. 1986Sebastian Vettel, b. 1987

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 131 sources across 63 countries.

Official registers attesting Sebastian
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026186K#35
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—186K#35
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020156K#359
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—44K#190
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—43K#85
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—40K#103
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—39K#91
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202429K#86
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)202423K#43
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202022K—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—18K#239
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—16K#45

Reference works 6

  • 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 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 2026-09-12 data build · 1,735 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sebastian?
We estimate roughly 11 million people bear Sebastian (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Sebastian have the most bearers?
Sebastian is most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is most often spelled juan.
How common is Sebastian compared with other names?
In Argentina, Sebastian is the 2nd most common given name of 517,176 given names recorded there.
Is Sebastian a male or female name?
Sebastian 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 does the name Sebastian mean?
Recorded meaning: from the male personal name Sebastian, from Latin Sebastianus, literally 'man from Sebastia'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sebastian

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, “Sebastian” — the 2nd most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sebastian parses inside a full name →