Fanny
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: English hypocoristic of Frances/Francisca; also linked to Fanny
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fani/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fanny is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 75th most common given name.
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 744(inferred from the name graph)
- FRFrance≈1 in 884
- HUHungary1 in 396as Fanni
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Fanny itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 362 (measured from records)
- 1 in 459 (inferred from the name graph)
≈86,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Fani in EC Ecuador, VE Venezuela and Fanni in HU Hungary.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
English hypocoristic of Frances/Francisca; also linked to Fanny.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fanny is read(measured from records)
Fanny is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish38%
- French37%
Listed with the Stéphane family; treated here as a feminine variant linked to Stephen/Stephanie, from Greek Stephanos, “crown”.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Diminutif de Frances, forme anglaise de Françoise; du latin, « de France ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
- English10%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Fanny in English.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fanny 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 | — | ≈86,000 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Fanny | 42 |
| FR France | #177 | ≈77,000 est. | ≈1 in 884 | 80K | Fanny | 362 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 36,869 | 1 in 459 | 37K | Fani | 21 |
| HU Hungary | #146 | 24,651as Fanni | 1 in 396 | 25K | Fanni | 136 |
| VE Venezuela | — | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Fani | 14 |
| SE Sweden | — | 10,868 | 1 in 939 | 11K | Fanny | 45 |
| HK Hong Kong | #75 | ≈9,700 est. | ≈1 in 744 | — | Fanny | 66 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); INEC — civil registry names; Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Fanny is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, im 18. Jh. aus dem Englischen über nommener weibl. Vom., Koseform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Fanny Burneyb. 1752GBEnglish satirical novelist, diarist, playwright (1752-1840)
- Fanny Mendelssohnb. 1805DEGerman pianist and composer (1805–1847)
- Fanny Elsslerb. 1810ATAustrian ballerina (1810-1884)
- Fanny Crosbyb. 1820US19th century Christian hymnist
- Fanny Bullock Workmanb. 1859USAmerican geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer (1859–1925)
- Fanny Kaplanb. 1890RURussian assassin (1890-1918)
- Fanny Briceb. 1891USAmerican actress, singer and comedian (1891–1951)
- Fanny Blankers-Koenb. 1918NLDutch track and field athlete (1918–2004)
- Fanny Ardantb. 1949FRFrench actress (born 1949)
- Fanny Cottençonb. 1957FRFrench actress and producer
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 98 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 80K | #786 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 37K | #48 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11K | #379 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 8K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 27 | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Fanny mean, and where does it come from?
- English hypocoristic of Frances/Francisca; also linked to Fanny. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- Is Fanny a male or female name?
- Fanny is a female 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.
- In which country does Fanny have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 86 thousand people named Fanny in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fanny.
- Where is Fanny most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fanny is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 459 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Fanny?
- In the etymology graph, Stephanie, Francisca and Stefanie are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Frances.
- How do you pronounce Fanny?
- A machine transcription gives /fani/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Fanny?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 36,869 people named Fanny in 2024, about 1 in 459 residents.
- How common is Fanny compared with other names?
- In Hong Kong, Fanny is the 75th most common given name of 23,276 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fanny?
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/fannyThe 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, “Fanny” — the 75th most common given name in Hong Kong. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.