Yon

given name · Latin script

Meaning: Distant, but within sight; (that thing) just over there

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/jɑn/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Yon is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 15K(inferred from the name graph)
  • KRSouth Korea≈1 in 9.4Kas 연
  • USUnited States1 in 20Kas Yan

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Yon itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

62,323 named Yan, 2022

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
273 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)

Malaysia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

YonLatin(measured from records)
염희Hangul(measured from records)

5 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled 연 in KR South Korea and Yeon in CN China.

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)

Distant, but within sight; (that thing) just over there.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Yon 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.

Where Yon is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil—62,323as Yan1 in 3.4K62K—1
US United States—16,856as Yan1 in 20K17KYon273
CN China—≈11,000 est.≈1 in 131K—Yeon27
KR South Korea#1000≈5,500 est.≈1 in 9.4K37K연205
KP North Korea#290≈4,500 est.≈1 in 5.8K1Yon21
PL Poland—2,630as Yan1 in 15K2.5K—1
MY Malaysia—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 15K—Yon35
VE Venezuela—6011 in 48K601——

62,323 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Yon is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Colombia, United States, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Yón, Yön, Ÿon, Ÿön, Ýòņ

  • Indonesian given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, United States, Singapore

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Yön, Yôn

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Yōn, Yŏn, Yön, Yō̜n

  • Khmer given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Israel, Hong Kong

    Also written Ýō់ňី, Ÿិōń, Ýō់ňូ, Ýōńី

  • Japanese given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, Peru, Malaysia

    Also written Ÿoñ, Yön

  • Thai given name140 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Malaysia, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao, Malay

    Also written Jean, ยูนุ, Yeen, ยูนุ๊, Yin

  • Swahili given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, Spain, Nigeria

    Also written Yön

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Yon 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.

  • Flor de loto

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • In otk, pec. to Uyğ.; the contexts suggest some such meaning as 'efficacity' of medical remedies

    as a wordClauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish (1972)

  • In sco, that, those, yonder (indicating a person or thing at some distance in time or space usually more remote than that)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • ISO 639-3 language code for Yongkom.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In okg, you; second-person singular pronoun

    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)

1850190019502000John L. V. Murphy, b. 1878John Bandmann, b. 1982Yon González, b. 1987Yon Tumarkin, b. 1989

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)

InformalHi Yon,

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)

Attested in 52 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Yon
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
KR South KoreaKOSIS — 2015 census surnames201537K#57
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103K#10,748
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.8K#10,421
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.8K#10,993
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2#404,708
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2#416,100
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

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 Yon mean, and where does it come from?
Distant, but within sight; (that thing) just over there. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Yon?
A machine transcription gives /jɑn/ (IPA) for English.
Is Yon a male or female name?
Yon is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Yon have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 62 thousand people named Yan, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Yon?
In Venezuela, the national register counted 601 people named Yon, about 1 in 48 thousand residents.
How common is Yon compared with other names?
In North Korea, Yon is the 290th most common given name of 2,746 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Yon?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/yon

The 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, “Yon” — the 290th most common given name in North Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Yon parses inside a full name →