Kwon
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 3. Chinese W: variant of Guan 2
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkwɑn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kwon is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in North Korea than in any other country, where it is the 57th most common surname.
- KRSouth Korea≈1 in 3.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 13K
- CACanada≈1 in 18K
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.
- North Korea (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 386 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 642 (inferred from the name graph)
≈40,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
North Korea, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
3. Chinese W: variant of Guan 2.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kwon 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KP North Korea | #57 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 642 | 5 | Kwon | 29 |
| CN China | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Kwon | 27 |
| KR South Korea | #71 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 720K | Kwon | 227 |
| US United States | — | 13,235 | 1 in 25K | 14K | Kwon | 386 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Kwon | 147 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Kwon | 137 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Kwon | 15 |
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: KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Kwon is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Chinese variant of Guan
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Guan Yub. 162CNnot in their usual nameChinese general serving warlord Liu Bei (160-220)
- Nancy Kwanb. 1939USnot in their usual nameChinese-American actress
- Ke Huy Quanb. 1971USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor and stunt choreographer
- Kevin Kwanb. 1973SGnot in their usual nameAsian-American novelist
- Michelle Kwanb. 1980USnot in their usual nameAmerican figure skater and diplomat
- BoAb. 1986KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer, actress and songwriter
- G-Dragonb. 1988KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer
- Dan Kwanb. 1988USnot in their usual nameAmerican director and screenwriter
- Kwon So-hyunb. 1994KRSouth Korean singer and actress, 1994
- Hoshib. 1996KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean singer
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 28 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | KOSIS — 2015 census surnames | 2015 | 720K | #19 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,468 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,721 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.4K | #3,472 |
| KP North Korea | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 5 | #37 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname 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 Kwon mean, and where does it come from?
- 3. Chinese W: variant of Guan 2. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kwon?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkwɑn/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kwon have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 40 thousand people named Kwon in North Korea, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kwon.
- How common is the name Kwon?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,235 people named Kwon in 2010, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Kwon compared with other names?
- In North Korea, Kwon is the 57th most common surname of 2,439 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kwon?
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/kwonThe 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, “Kwon” — the 57th most common surname in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.