Garn
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: yarn (twisted fibers for weaving)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɡɑɹn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Garn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DKDenmark1 in 85K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 271K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 323K
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)
- Sources
- 29 (measured from records)
- 1 in 85K (inferred from the name graph)
1,226 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
1. metonymic occupational name for a producer of or dealer in yam. Middle High German garn. 2. (in eastern Germany) from Slavic gorn‘mountain dweller’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Garn is read(measured from records)
Garn 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.
- English82%
yarn (twisted fibers for weaving)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German6.2%
1. metonymic occupational name for a producer of or dealer in yam. Middle High German garn. 2. (in eastern Germany) from Slavic gorn‘mountain dweller’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
yarn: a thread, typically in a ball/skein or on a spool; (often) such balls and/or spools collectively
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
from nhd. Garn 'thread, fishing net'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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 in the world(measured from records)
Garn 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 | 1,226 | 1 in 271K | 1.3K | Garn | 29 |
| DK Denmark | 69 | 1 in 85K | 69 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 26 | 1 in 323K | 26 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | 15 | 1 in 680K | 15 | — | — |
| PL Poland | 2 | 1 in 19M | 2 | — | — |
1,226 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Garn 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 Swedish, yarn; a twisted strand of fiber used for e.g. knitting
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In enm, Yarn; a length of fibre used to weave.
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)
- Jake Garnb. 1932USAmerican politician and general (born 1932)
- Bernhard Garnb. 1987ATAustrian rower
- Alex C GarnUSresearcher, ORCID id # 0000-0002-7824-4027
- Daryl GarnUScollege basketball player (1962–1962) Utah State
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)
Attested in 18 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,135 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #21,360 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.2K | #20,270 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 69 | #7,908 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 26 | #30,302 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 15 | #30,531 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #330,881 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Where does the name Garn come from?
- 1. metonymic occupational name for a producer of or dealer in yam. Middle High German garn. 2. (in eastern Germany) from Slavic gorn‘mountain dweller’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Garn?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɑɹn/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Garn mean?
- In English, yarn (twisted fibers for weaving)
- In which country does Garn have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.2 thousand people named Garn, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled garn.
- Where is Garn most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Garn is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 85 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Garn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,226 people named Garn in 2010, about 1 in 271 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Garn?
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/garnThe 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, “Garn”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.