Yan

given name · Portuguese · Latin script

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

Yan is a given name, most frequently recorded in Argentina, where it is the 2nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: nonstandard spelling of yān.

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 Sebastian in DE Germany, EC Ecuador.

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●

nonstandard spelling of yān

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 31 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Yan 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●

  • Portuguese569K48%
  • English208K18%
  • Chinese138K12%
  • Spanish46K4%
  • French44K4%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Portuguese568,64148%
English207,58718%
Chinese138,41412%
Spanish46,1304%
French43,6934%

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◐

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

  • Chinese given name473K records spelled Yan5 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Yán, Yàn

  • a separate given name62K records spelled Yan9 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Y̋aṅ, Yǎn, Yañ, Yāṅ, Yán

  • French given name58K records spelled Yan5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Canada, United States, Belgium

    Also written Yañ, Yàn, Y-An, Yan'

  • Hindi given name26K records spelled Yan13 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Yañ, Ýáń, Yân, Ýăñ, Yån

  • Polish given name13K records spelled Yan5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, China

    Also written Yañ, Ýäņ, Ýan, Ýãñ

  • Khmer given name11K records spelled Yan4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, Malaysia, Cambodia

    Also written Yán, Yān, Yàn

  • Vietnamese given name9.1K records spelled Yan78 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Vietnam, Malaysia, United States, Indonesia

    Languages: Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Yen, Yến, Yên, Yển, Yén

88 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●

Yan 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, One.

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

  • ‘Gorgeous’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In German, männl. Vom., seit den i98oer-Jahren gelegentlich vorkommende Schreibvariante von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In och, The appearance of a face, face, countenance, color

    as a wordSchuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

  • In Iloko, place, location, situation, locality, spot, position

    as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0

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●

020406080196019802000202077 · 2008

Show as table
Yan in INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024), Ecuador, 1954–2024
Yearrecords
19542
19551
19572
19581
19602
19611
19631
19643
19655
19664
19673
19681
19693
19704
19716
19725
19732
19743
19753
19763
19775
19787
19792
19801
19817
19826
19836
19844
19858
19869
19875
19888
198910
19909
19916
19925
19936
199411
19955
19965
19977
19987
199913
20008
20016
200211
20038
200465
200513
200628
200742
200877
200937
201027
20116
201216
201311
201424
201519
201627
201730
201816
20195
20201
20211
202210
20236
20242

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 68 years between 1954–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

05001000150020002500Emperor Wu of Jin, b. 236Emperor Wuzong of Tang, b. 814Yan Gamarnik, b. 1894Yan Frenkel, b. 1924Yan Pascal Tortelier, b. 1947Mo Yan, b. 1955Tiffany Tang, b. 1983Yan Valery, b. 1999Yan Couto, b. 2002Yan D.Temande, b. 2006

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 88 sources across 49 countries.

Official registers attesting Yan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202262K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—62K#492
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—26K#1,183
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202017K#2,105
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202012K#1,779
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)202012K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201011K#3,182
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008K#4,091
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)20245.1K#2,185
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20204.8K#1,779
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—3.1K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20262.5K#305

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 · 713 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

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

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

See how Yan parses inside a full name →