Shan
given name · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Shan is a given name, most frequently recorded in Australia. It appears chiefly in English and Hindi, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: 3 ‘Mountain’. A symbol of greatness, achievement, and longevity.
- MYMalaysia1 in 13K◐
- AUAustralia1 in 14K
- CACanada1 in 39K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈3.7K ●
- Sources
- 320 ●
- 1 in 13K ◐
across 9 countries
108K records
Official registry-verified
Guyana
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Shån in JM Jamaica and Shaen in IT Italy.
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●
3 ‘Mountain’. A symbol of greatness, achievement, and longevity. See sHOUSHAN. 2 9 ‘Elegant bearing’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 24 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AU Australia | #986 | 8,435 | 10K rec. | — | 1 | Shan | 166 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 4,988 | 5.7K rec. | — | 3 | Shan | 122 |
| MY Malaysia | — | 4,863 | 6.1K rec. | — | — | Shan | 68 |
| US United States | — | 3,136 | 70K rec. | 1 in 106K | 3.1K | Shan | 320 |
| IN India | — | 2,417 | 1.6K rec. | — | 79 | Shan | 99 |
| CA Canada | — | 2,108 | 2.6K rec. | — | 1 | Shan | 112 |
| PH Philippines | — | 1,526 | 888 rec. | — | — | Shan | 54 |
| DE Germany | — | 946 | 1.4K rec. | — | — | Shan | 73 |
| CN China | — | 907 | 713 rec. | — | — | Shan | 70 |
| SG Singapore | #637 | 768 | 1.1K rec. | — | — | Shan | 78 |
| PK Pakistan | — | 756 | 549 rec. | — | — | Shan | 67 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 368 | 629 rec. | — | 25 | Shan | 40 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- English84K28%
- Hindi76K26%
- Chinese41K14%
- Urdu18K6%
- 17K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 83,519 | 28% |
| Hindi | 75,877 | 26% |
| Chinese | 40,584 | 14% |
| Urdu | 18,488 | 6% |
| 16,797 | 6% |
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●
Shan 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 Chinese, nonstandard spelling of shān
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, unfair, harsh
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, S. Asian people
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In och, to twinkle; time of a short glance; moment
as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)
In sco, unfair, mean, harsh, nasty
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1899 | 2 |
| 1919 | 2 |
| 1920 | 1 |
| 1922 | 1 |
| 1923 | 1 |
| 1924 | 2 |
| 1925 | 1 |
| 1926 | 2 |
| 1927 | 3 |
| 1928 | 1 |
| 1929 | 4 |
| 1930 | 1 |
| 1931 | 4 |
| 1932 | 3 |
| 1933 | 3 |
| 1934 | 5 |
| 1935 | 5 |
| 1936 | 8 |
| 1937 | 3 |
| 1938 | 6 |
| 1939 | 10 |
| 1940 | 10 |
| 1941 | 6 |
| 1942 | 7 |
| 1943 | 8 |
| 1944 | 14 |
| 1945 | 13 |
| 1946 | 12 |
| 1947 | 10 |
| 1948 | 16 |
| 1949 | 16 |
| 1950 | 23 |
| 1951 | 24 |
| 1952 | 31 |
| 1953 | 33 |
| 1954 | 38 |
| 1955 | 20 |
| 1956 | 27 |
| 1957 | 46 |
| 1958 | 48 |
| 1959 | 63 |
| 1960 | 52 |
| 1961 | 45 |
| 1962 | 72 |
| 1963 | 56 |
| 1964 | 85 |
| 1965 | 58 |
| 1966 | 100 |
| 1967 | 85 |
| 1968 | 109 |
| 1969 | 111 |
| 1970 | 110 |
| 1971 | 111 |
| 1972 | 132 |
| 1973 | 136 |
| 1974 | 151 |
| 1975 | 143 |
| 1976 | 217 |
| 1977 | 175 |
| 1978 | 197 |
| 1979 | 212 |
| 1980 | 289 |
| 1981 | 290 |
| 1982 | 498 |
| 1983 | 593 |
| 1984 | 818 |
| 1985 | 711 |
| 1986 | 667 |
| 1987 | 802 |
| 1988 | 869 |
| 1989 | 872 |
| 1990 | 912 |
| 1991 | 1,097 |
| 1992 | 1,091 |
| 1993 | 1,156 |
| 1994 | 824 |
| 1995 | 798 |
| 1996 | 316 |
| 1997 | 280 |
| 1998 | 193 |
| 1999 | 3 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2011 | 3 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2014 | 25 |
| 2015 | 65 |
IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 89 years between 1899–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Zhang Shanb. 1968CNChinese sport shooter
- Shan Tsutsuib. 1971USAmerican politician
- Shan Rahimkhanb. 1972ATAustrian entrepreneur
- Shan Atcib. 1978SESwedish actor
- Shan Serafinb. 1982USfilmmaker
- Shan Xiaonab. 1983DEGerman table tennis player
- Hedwig Tamb. 1990HKnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress and model
- Jin Shanb. 1995CNChinese Go player
- Shan Robitzkyactor
- Shan Chettyactor
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 72 sources across 39 countries.
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 · 571 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Shan?
- We estimate roughly 3.7 thousand people bear Shan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Shan have the most bearers?
- Shan is most frequently recorded in Australia, where it is most often spelled shan.
- Where is Shan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Shan is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 13 thousand people — even though Australia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Shan compared with other names?
- In Australia, Shan is the 986th most common given name of 197,734 given names recorded there.
- Is Shan a male or female name?
- Shan is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- What does the name Shan mean?
- Recorded meaning: 3 ‘Mountain’. A symbol of greatness, achievement, and longevity.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/shanThe 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, “Shan” — the 986th most common given name in Australia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.