Fane
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from a medieval nickname for a well-disposed person (from Old English fagen ‘glad, willing’), or from a medieval Welsh nickname
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/feɪn/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Fane is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Côte d’Ivoire than in any other country. In the Bahamas it is the 57th most common surname.
- CICôte d’Ivoire≈1 in 3.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- ALAlbania≈1 in 35K
- NONorway1 in 48K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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.
- Côte d’Ivoire (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 201 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from a medieval nickname for a well-disposed person (from Old English fagen ‘glad, willing’), or from a medieval Welsh nickname
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fane is read
(measured from records)Fane is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English63%
from a medieval nickname for a well-disposed person (from Old English fagen ‘glad, willing’), or from a medieval Welsh nickname
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from OE fægen/ME fein, fayn, fane ‘glad, well-disposed’; first attested William le Vain 1242 Fees (W)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A weathercock, a weather vane.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French21%
dry leaf
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Fane is found
(measured from records)Fane 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | 1.1K | — | — |
| US United States | — | 987 | 1 in 337K | 1K | Fane | 201 |
| FR France | — | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 165K | 48 | — | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 188K | — | Fane | 95 |
| RO Romania | — | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 81K | 489 | — | 19 |
| NO Norway | — | 114 | 1 in 48K | 114 | — | 1 |
| AL Albania | — | ≈69 est. | ≈1 in 35K | 16 | — | — |
| BS Bahamas | #57 | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Fane | 2 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; DEPABD — name-day population snapshot; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts). 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)Fane 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 Irish, An English name, meaning well-disposed, also used as a synonym of Feehin
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Akan, Ak. = fan. pr. 106. 0-fa-ne-fa, s. ofa; of. Kristoni, a half-and-half Christian, fanos, G. foundation; syn. fapeme, nhyease, mfiase, utoase;- to f., to lay the foundation (in building)
as a wordDictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi)
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)- John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorlandb. 1759GBLord Privy Seal (1759-1841)
- Lord Burghershb. 1784GBnot in their usual nameBritish Army general
- Priscilla Fane, Countess of Westmorlandb. 1793GBBritish linguist and artist
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)32 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Fane mean, and where does it come from?
- from a medieval nickname for a well-disposed person (from Old English fagen ‘glad, willing’), or from a medieval Welsh nickname Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Fane?
- In the etymology graph, Esteve, Tapani and Steffan are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Fane?
- It depends on the language: in English /feɪn/ (Wiktionary); in French /fan/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Fane?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Fane in Côte d’Ivoire, more than in any other country we hold. After it come United States, France, United Kingdom and Romania; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Fane?
- In the United States, the national register counted 987 people named Fane in 2010, about 1 in 337 thousand residents.
- How common is Fane compared with other names?
- In the Bahamas, Fane is the 57th most common surname of 3,175 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fane?
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/faneThe 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, “Fane” — the 57th most common surname in Bahamas. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.