Morvan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Breton name, possibly from mor ‘sea’ + gwenn ‘white’ or an old saint name
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɔʀvɑ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Morvan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 5.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- DMDominica1 in 2.5K
- HTHaiti≈1 in 108K
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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 282 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈13,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Dominica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Breton name, possibly from mor ‘sea’ + gwenn ‘white’ or an old saint name
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Morvan 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #244 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | 1.6K | Morvan | 282 |
| US United States | — | 316 | 1 in 1.1M | 345 | Morvan | 80 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 1.6M | 294 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 491K | — | Morvan | 27 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 325K | — | Morvan | 28 |
| HT Haiti | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 108K | listed | — | 1 |
| BY Belarus | — | ≈80 est. | ≈1 in 118K | — | Morvan | 2 |
| BE Belgium | — | 62 | 1 in 189K | 62 | Morvan | 17 |
| DM Dominica | — | 30 | 1 in 2.5K | 30 | — | — |
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: INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Dominica — Revised List of Electors May 2025; the ht-potomitan-names register. 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)
Morvan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Breton name; often linked to Celtic roots and St. Morvan.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, 1. regional name for someone from Morvan in Burgundy. 2. from the old Breton personal name Morvan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In French, Variante bretonne voisine de Morgan; d’origine celtique.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Origine incertaine.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
In French, Celtic; means « enfant de la mer » / « homme de la mer ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegardeb. 1648FRFrench Jesuit (1648–1734)
- Augustin Marie Morvanb. 1819FRFrench physician, politician, and writer
- Joseph Morvanb. 1924FRroad bicycle racer (1924–1999)
- Carol Sloaneb. 1937USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer (1937–2023)
- Françoise Morvanb. 1958FRFrench writer (born 1958)
- Fab Morvanb. 1966FRFrench singer
- Jean-David Morvanb. 1969FRFrench comics author (b. 1969)
- Gilles Morvanb. 1970FRFrench actor
- Alvanb. 1993FRnot in their usual nameFrench singer
- Małgorzata MandolaPLnot in their usual namePolish linguist
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 34 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 2.3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 2.2K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 1.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 1.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 1.9K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 1.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 1.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 1.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 1.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | 1.4K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 757 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 345 | #62,640 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Morvan?
- A machine transcription gives /mɔʀvɑ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Morvan mean, and where does it come from?
- Breton name, possibly from mor ‘sea’ + gwenn ‘white’ or an old saint name Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- In which country does Morvan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 13 thousand people named Morvan in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled morvan.
- Where is Morvan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Morvan is densest in Dominica — about 1 in 2.5 thousand people — even though France holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Morvan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 316 people named Morvan in 2010, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
- How common is Morvan compared with other names?
- In France, Morvan is the 244th most common surname of 1,200,812 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Morvan?
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/morvanThe 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, “Morvan” — the 244th most common surname in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.