Donavan
given name · Latin script
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈdɑnəˌvæn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Donavan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Variant of Donovan.
- USUnited States1 in 51K(measured from records)
- GYGuyana1 in 94K
- NLNetherlands1 in 143K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 88 (measured from records)
- 1 in 51K (inferred from the name graph)
6,502 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)- IrishÓ(inferred from the name graph)via Donovan
- Irish rootdonn“brown”(inferred from the name graph)via Donovan
Steps marked ◐ come from the entry for the form named above them, not from this name's own sources.
Variant of Donovan.
Cited for this meaning 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Donavan 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 | 6,502 | 1 in 51K | 6.4K | Donavan | 88 |
| BR Brazil | 287 | 1 in 738K | 287 | Donavan | 40 |
| NL Netherlands | 121 | 1 in 143K | 121 | — | 4 |
| GY Guyana | 8 | 1 in 94K | 8 | — | — |
| CR Costa Rica | 4 | 1 in 1.3M | 4 | — | 2 |
| IS Iceland | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | — | — |
6,502 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Donavan Frebergb. 1971USAmerican actor and photographer
- Donavan Mitchemb. 1981USAmerican activist
- Donavan Tateb. 1990USAmerican baseball player
- Donavan Brazierb. 1997USAmerican athletics competitor
- Donavan Grondinb. 2000FRFrench cyclist
- Donavan Phillipb. 2005LCSaint Lucian footballer
- Don MunfordUSnot in their usual nameAmerican politician
- Donavan BraggUSbasketball player
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)37 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 765 | #29,181 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 618 | #36,246 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 603 | #39,379 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 Donavan a male or female name?
- Donavan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Brazil (IBGE, 2022) and Netherlands (Meertens NVB).
- What does the name Donavan mean, and where does it come from?
- Variant of Donovan. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Donavan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈdɑnəˌvæn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Donavan have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 6.5 thousand people named Donavan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled donavan.
- Where is Donavan most common?
- Donavan is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 51 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Donavan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 6,502 people named Donavan in 2020, about 1 in 51 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Donavan?
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/donavanThe 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, “Donavan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.