Ercan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From earc, ‘red’ or ‘speckled’; borne by several Irish bishops and priests
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/eɾdʒan/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ercan is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Türkiye than in any other country.
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 808(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 71K
- CYCyprus≈1 in 2.4K
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.
- Türkiye (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 145 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 808 (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Türkiye, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From earc, ‘red’ or ‘speckled’; borne by several Irish bishops and priests.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Irish first names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Ercan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TR Türkiye | #186 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 808 | register #98 | Ercan | 145 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 7.8K | 32 | — | — |
| FR France | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 64K | 170 | — | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 307 | Ercan | 34 |
| CY Cyprus | #224 | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Ercan | 14 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 20K | 157 | Ercan | 25 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 243 | 1 in 71K | 243 | Ercan | 44 |
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: Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Statbel — Noms de famille (family names); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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)Ercan 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 Turkish, a male given name which means "brave, the brave one, strong"
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Turkish, Yiğit, canlı, cesur kimse.
as a wordTDK Kişi Adları Sözlüğü (official Turkish given-name dictionary)
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)- Ercan Aktunab. 1940TRTurkish association football player (1940–2013)
- Ercan Karakaşb. 1945TRTurkish statesperson (born 1945)
- Ercan Yazganb. 1946TRTurkish comedian and actor (1946–2018)
- Ercan Kesalb. 1959TRTurkish actor and screenwriter (born 1959)
- Ercan Durmazb. 1965TRTurkish-German actor (born 1965)
- Ercan Karacaylib. 1967TRTurkish-German actor (born 1967)
- Ercan Saatçib. 1968TRTurkish singer (born 1968)
- Ercan Özkanb. 1969TRTurkish cinematographer (born 1969)
- Ercan Yıldızb. 1974TRTurkish wrestler (born 1974)
- Ercan Karab. 1996ATTurkish-Austrian association football player (born 1996)
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)44 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 307 | #5,566 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 194 | #8,671 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 187 | #11,083 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 157 | #7,663 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 72 | — |
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)
- Тахиров, Речник на турските лични имена в България
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 Ercan mean, and where does it come from?
- From earc, ‘red’ or ‘speckled’; borne by several Irish bishops and priests. Recorded by Irish first names.
- How do you pronounce Ercan?
- A machine transcription gives /eɾdʒan/ (IPA) for Turkish.
- Is Ercan a male or female name?
- Ercan is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Netherlands (Meertens NVB), United States (Census Bureau, 2020), France (INSEE, 1992) and Denmark (Danmarks Statistik), among others.
- In which country does Ercan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 102 thousand people named Ercan in Türkiye, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ercan.
- How common is the name Ercan?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 243 people named Ercan, about 1 in 71 thousand residents.
- How common is Ercan compared with other names?
- In Türkiye, Ercan is the 186th most common given name of 264,080 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ercan?
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/ercanThe 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, “Ercan” — the 186th most common given name in Türkiye. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.