Wan

given name · Malay · Latin script

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

Wan is a given name, most frequently recorded in Malaysia, where it is the 15th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Malay and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia1 in 237◐
  • SGSingapore1 in 3.8K
  • IDIndonesia1 in 10K

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

≈2.1K ●

across 6 countries

Sources
152 ●

299K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 63K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Wàn in MA Morocco.

Meaning & origin●

from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Wan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MY Malaysia#15273,627270K rec.—1.1KWan152
ID Indonesia#7819,0509.8K rec.——Wan117
SG Singapore#2252,8212.4K rec.——Wan93
US United States—1,6218.5K rec.1 in 205K7.4KWan141
PH Philippines—1,000404 rec.——Wan14
HK Hong Kong#2318501.2K rec.——Wan53
AR Argentina—766979 rec.—83Wan36
GB United Kingdom—649782 rec.——Wan56
BR Brazil—301—1 in 703K301——
CL Chile—251364 rec.—1Wan23
PE Peru—227899 rec.——Wan25
CO Colombia—199420 rec.——Wan24

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

Languages●

  • Malay237K45%
  • English110K21%
  • Indonesian53K10%
  • Chinese39K8%
  • Korean11K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Malay236,54945%
English110,47021%
Indonesian52,53510%
Chinese39,3628%
Korean11,4222%

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◐

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

  • English given name262K records spelled Wan31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Western Frisian

    Also written Waen, Wàn, Wân, Wåñ, Wän

  • Chinese given name122K records spelled Wan3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan

    Also written Wàn

  • Korean given name18K records spelled Wan20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Korea, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Korean, Chinese

    Also written 완희, 완, 완호, 완우, 완회

  • Urdu given name13K records spelled Wan2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, United Kingdom

    Also written Wäń

  • Arabic given name12K records spelled Wan69 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Egypt, United States, Morocco

    Also written Wäñ, Wãn, Wän, Wàn, Wân

86 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●

Wan 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, Pale, sickly-looking.

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

  • Indeterminately reserved ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code for Nigeria.

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

  • In kaw, Clear or plain; certain or fixed. Herd.

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

  • In ang, third-person singular of winnan

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

  • In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of wān

    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●

051015194019601980200012 · 1970

Show as table
Wan in naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls), India, 1929–2015
Yearrecords
19291
19301
19351
19361
19381
19391
19401
19411
19423
19431
19443
19454
19463
19472
19485
19495
19502
19511
19526
19533
19541
19553
19561
19572
19584
19594
19603
19614
19629
19636
19646
19657
19666
19678
196811
196910
197012
19715
197210
197311
19745
197511
19769
197712
19789
197910
19807
19816
19825
198311
19846
19859
198610
198710
19886
19899
19905
19917
19927
19935
19944
19958
19963
19974
20111
20121
20132
20153

IN naampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls) — 68 years between 1929–2015. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

5001000150020002500Wang Wan, b. 693Kim Wan, b. 1961Wan Kuzain, b. 1998Junaidi Arif, b. 2002

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 59 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Wan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020207.4K#4,631
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.8K#5,911
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.6K#6,747
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.6K#6,224
MY Malaysiadata.gov.my — Baby Name Popularity Dashboard (HTML-embedded JSON)—1.1K—
MY Malaysiadata.gov.my — Baby Name Popularity Dashboard (HTML-embedded JSON)—994—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020978#6,224
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022301—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—268#13,203
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—268#13,167
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—264#18,999
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—164#28,224

Reference works 5

  • 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
  • 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 · 329 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Wan?
We estimate roughly 2.1 thousand people bear Wan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
In which country does Wan have the most bearers?
Wan is most frequently recorded in Malaysia, where it is most often spelled wan.
How common is Wan compared with other names?
In Malaysia, Wan is the 15th most common given name of 325,158 given names recorded there.
Is Wan a male or female name?
Wan 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 Wan mean?
Recorded meaning: from the Germanic divine group the Wanen/Vanir
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wan

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, “Wan” — the 15th most common given name in Malaysia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Wan parses inside a full name →