Athan

given name · Latin script

Meaning: English Christian saint

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

/eɪθən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Athan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 199K(measured from records)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 168K
  • NZNew Zealand≈1 in 185K

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.

United States (measured from records)

1,670 people, 2020

Sources
204 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 168K (inferred from the name graph)

Australia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

English Christian saint

Sources 1

  • Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Athan 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.

Where Athan is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1,6701 in 199K1.7KAthan204
NG Nigeria≈690 est.≈1 in 310K—Athan18
PH Philippines≈290 est.≈1 in 382K—Athan25
AU Australia≈150 est.≈1 in 168K3Athan61
MY Malaysia≈110 est.≈1 in 289K—Athan13
NZ New Zealand≈27 est.≈1 in 185K—Athan9
SG Singapore≈22 est.≈1 in 278K—Athan13

1,670 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; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Athan is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Ãthan

  • Greek given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece, United States, Canada

    Also written Αθαν, Åthån

  • Hindi surname31 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Thailand, Philippines, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Thai

    Also written Athani, Arthan, อาจหาร, Atha, Art-Han

  • Arabic given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco

    Also written Âţhåñ

44 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(measured from records)

Athan is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Indonesian, syllabic abbreviation of atase pertahanan

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

  • In ssf, type; sort

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

  • In Scottish Gaelic, coltsfoot

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

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)

1920194019601980Athan Karras, b. 1927Athan Theoharis, b. 1936Athan Maroulis, b. 1964

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)

InformalHi Athan,

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 32 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Athan
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010331#60,790
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020315#67,529
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000289#64,385
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name 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

What does the name Athan mean, and where does it come from?
English Christian saint Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
How do you pronounce Athan?
A machine transcription gives /eɪθən/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Athan?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,670 people named Athan in 2020, about 1 in 199 thousand residents.
Is Athan a male or female name?
Athan 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.
In which country does Athan have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Athan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled athan.

What do you want to know about Athan?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/athan

The 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, “Athan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Athan parses inside a full name →