Gagnon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. nickname for an aggressive or belligerent man, from Old French gagnon ‘ mastiff’, ‘guard dog’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡænjən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gagnon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CACanada≈1 in 1.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 8.6K
- USUnited States1 in 16K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 433 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈82,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
- Old Frenchgagnon(measured from records)
- Occitanganhon(measured from records)
1. nickname for an aggressive or belligerent man, from Old French gagnon ‘ mastiff’, ‘guard dog’. 2. possibly from Occitan ganhon ‘young pig’, applied as an offensive nickname. See also Gonyeau.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gagnon 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 | — | ≈82,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Gagnon | 9 |
| CA Canada | #134 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Gagnon | 280 |
| US United States | — | 21,208 | 1 in 16K | 21K | Gagnon | 433 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈7,600 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Gagnon | 102 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 32K | — | Gagnon | 16 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Gagnon | 9 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Gagnon | 21 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010. 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)
Gagnon is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, a surname, Gagnon of Québécois origin
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, Variante de Gaignon, dérivé de l’ancien français ga(a)igneor « laboureur, cultivateur »; surnom d’après le métier.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
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)
- Clarence Gagnonb. 1881CACanadian painter (1881-1942)
- Onésime Gagnonb. 1888CACanadian politician (1888-1961)
- Édouard Gagnonb. 1918CACatholic cardinal (1918–2007)
- Rene Gagnonb. 1925USUnited States Marine (1925-1979)
- André Gagnonb. 1936CACanadian pianist (1936–2020)
- Claude Gagnonb. 1949CACanadian film director
- Stéphane Gagnonb. 1969CAQuébécois actor
- Marc Gagnonb. 1975CACanadian short track speed skater
- Marie-Michèle Gagnonb. 1989CACanadian alpine skier
- Pierce Gagnonb. 2005USAmerican child actor
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 21K | #1,697 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 21K | #1,604 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,741 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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
- Where does the name Gagnon come from?
- 1. nickname for an aggressive or belligerent man, from Old French gagnon ‘ mastiff’, ‘guard dog’. 2. possibly from Occitan ganhon ‘young pig’, applied as an offensive nickname. See also Gonyeau. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gagnon?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡænjən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Gagnon mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. nickname for an aggressive or belligerent man, from Old French gagnon ‘ mastiff’, ‘guard dog’.
- In which country does Gagnon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 82 thousand people named Gagnon in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gagnon.
- How common is the name Gagnon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,208 people named Gagnon in 2010, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
- How common is Gagnon compared with other names?
- In Canada, Gagnon is the 134th most common surname of 699,524 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gagnon?
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/gagnonThe 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, “Gagnon” — the 134th most common surname in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.