Harlan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: altered form of Harland 1
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
Harlan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 26K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 125K
- CRCosta Rica1 in 196K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 100 (measured from records)
- 1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
12,600 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)altered form of Harland 1. [H3131EES Harlan County, KY, was named for Major Silas Harlan (died 1782).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Harlan, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Harlan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 12,600 | 1 in 26K | 12K | Harlan | 100 |
| BR Brazil | — | 318 | 1 in 666K | 318 | Harlan | 55 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 26 | 1 in 196K | 26 | — | 6 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11 | 1 in 928K | 11 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 9 | 1 in 1.9M | 9 | — | 1 |
| GY Guyana | — | 6 | 1 in 125K | 6 | — | — |
| CV Cape Verde | #626 | — | — | — | Harlan | 1 |
12,600 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)Harlan 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, A surname from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Different form of Harland.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Terra della lepre
as a nameIl grande libro dei nomi per bebè. Significato, origini, curiosità. Oltre 7000 nomi per bambine e bambini Significato,…
English (esp. U.S.): transferred use of the surname, originally a local name from any of various places in England, mostly named with the Old English elements hara hare + land . Use as a given name honours the American judge John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), a conservative Republican who was nevertheless a pioneering supporter of civil rights in the Supreme Court. Variant: Harland .
as a word
In Basque, ( PMuj ). Obra de piedra labrada. Cf. harlandu, HARRI-LANGINTZA. Apainkai oek dakartenez, lan-egikera ori berpizte (renacimiento) garaia baño lenagokua da, ar lan ederkaiak egi-atza (sello, rastro) dute beintzat (estilo ojival) . J.B. Ayerbe EEs 1912, 37. Rodin-en arlan aurrean . NEtx LBB 266.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)- Harlan Fiske Stoneb. 1872USchief justice of the United States from 1941 to 1946
- Harlan Briggsb. 1879USAmerican actor (1879-1952)
- Harlan Wardeb. 1917USAmerican actor (1917-1980)
- Harlan James Smithb. 1924USAmerican astronomer (1924–1991)
- Harlan Mathewsb. 1927USAmerican politician (1927–2014)
- Harlan Andersonb. 1929USAmerican engineer and entrepreneur (1929–2019)
- Harlan Ellisonb. 1934USAmerican writer (1934–2018)
- Harlan Crowb. 1949USAmerican–St. Kitts and Nevis real estate developer, art collector and philanthropist
- Harlan Cobenb. 1962USAmerican writer
- John Harlan Kimb. 1993AUAustralian 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)47 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 12K | #2,126 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 454 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 318 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 315 | #18,259 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 305 | #2,126 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 262 | #9,672 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 238 | #22,815 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 36 | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 26 | #4,957 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 22 | — |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11 | #33,841 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 9 | #19,086 |
Reference works 6
- 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 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Harlan a male or female name?
- Harlan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Brazil (IBGE, 2022).
- What does the name Harlan mean?
- Recorded meaning: altered form of Harland 1.
- Where does the name Harlan come from?
- altered form of Harland 1. [H3131EES Harlan County, KY, was named for Major Silas Harlan (died 1782). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Harlan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Harlan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled harlan.
- Where is Harlan most common?
- Harlan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 26 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Harlan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,600 people named Harlan in 2020, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
- How common is Harlan compared with other names?
- In Cape Verde, Harlan is the 626th most common given name of 878 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Harlan?
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/harlanThe 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, “Harlan” — the 626th most common given name in Cape Verde. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.