Conan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: person from Conan, Aberdeenshire, or from the Old Breton male name Conan meaning 'high, mighty'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/koʊnən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Conan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GAGabon≈1 in 43K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 46K
- GYGuyana1 in 47K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 247 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 43K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Gabon, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
person from Conan, Aberdeenshire, or from the Old Breton male name Conan meaning 'high, mighty'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Conan counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 284K | — | Conan | 16 |
| US United States | 1,839 | 1 in 181K | 1.8K | Conan | 104 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 131K | 37 | Conan | 13 |
| JP Japan | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 497K | — | Conan | 17 |
| PH Philippines | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 446K | — | Conan | 5 |
| IE Ireland | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Conan | 5 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 55K | 12 | — | 2 |
| GA Gabon | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Conan | 2 |
| SG Singapore | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 127K | — | Conan | 5 |
| GY Guyana | 16 | 1 in 47K | 16 | — | — |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Conan 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 Irish, ‘small hound’; name of a Fianna hero, St Conan of Assaroe, and Conan Meriadech, ancestor of Breton dukes
as a nameIrish first names
In English, from OBret Conan, name of Breton chiefs, kings and a saint; first attested Conanus dux Britanniae et comes Richemundie a1155 DC (L)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Irish Gaelic: the little dark one / dark, black.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Irish and English: Anglicized form of the Celtic name Conan. For the most part this is of Irish Gaelic origin, a pet form of cu ‘hound’ or ‘wolf’. However, it was in use in Yorkshire, especially among the
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, the Barbarian, film character
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Conan I of Rennesb. 1000FRDuke of Brittany from 990 to 992
- Conan II de Bretagneb. 1030FRDuke of Brittany
- Conan III, Duke of Brittanyb. 1095Duke of Brittany from 1112 to 1148
- Arthur Conan Doyleb. 1859GBBritish writer and physician (1859–1930)
- Adrian Conan Doyleb. 1910GBEnglish scion and writer (1910–1970)
- Conan Leeb. 1959USAmerican actor born 1959
- Conan O'Brienb. 1963USAmerican television show host and comedian
- Conan Stevensb. 1969AUAustralian actor, author and wrestler
- Conan Osírisb. 1989PTPortuguese singer-songwriter
- Conan Grayb. 1998USAmerican singer-songwriter
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 58 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.8K | #8,010 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 98 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2025 | 37 | #61 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 16 | #578 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 12 | #8,010 |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1986 | 12 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2024 | 10 | #352 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Concise Dictionary of First Names (Hanks & Hodges, 2001) | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | The Penguin Book of Baby Names (David Pickering) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Conan mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Conan, Aberdeenshire, or from the Old Breton male name Conan meaning 'high, mighty' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Conan?
- A machine transcription gives /koʊnən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Conan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.9 thousand people named Conan in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled conan.
- Is Conan a male or female name?
- Conan 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.
- How common is the name Conan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,839 people named Conan in 2020, about 1 in 181 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Conan?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/conanThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Conan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.