Dan (name)


Dan is a name in various cultures. As a given name it is often short for Daniel. It is also a surname with multiple origins.

Given name

Origins as a given name

Dan is an old Scandinavian given name with several disputed origins. The most likely theory is that it originated from the Old Norse ethnonym for Danes. This in turn originated from the Proto-Germanic masculine word *. There are several historical variants including Halbadaniz "half-Dane", as well as * "Danish".
The name Dan is also a Hebrew given name, after Dan, the fifth son of Jacob with Bilhah and founder of the Israelite Tribe of Dan. It is also a given name or a nickname for people named Daniel or possibly Jordan.

Surname

Origins

As an English surname, Dan is a variant spelling of Dann. Dann, another variant spelling of which is Dane, is a toponymic surname which originates from the Middle English and Old English, "valley".
The Hebrew surname Dan is a biblical name which refers to the tribe of Dan. As a given name it first appears in Genesis 30.
The Hungarian surname Dán is an abbreviation of Dániel.
Dan may be the spelling of multiple Chinese surnames, based on their pronunciation in different varieties of Chinese; they are listed below by their spelling in Hanyu Pinyin, which reflects the standard Mandarin pronunciation:
There are multiple Japanese surnames which are romanised as Dan, including:
There are three separate Korean surnames spelled in the Revised Romanization of Korean as Dan, each written with a different hanja. Bearers of each surname identify with a number of distinct bon-gwan, which are hometowns of clan lineages.
  • The most common, Cheunggye Dan, means "stairs". This character is also used to write the Chinese surname now pronounced Duàn in Mandarin. Major clans with this surname include:
  • *The Gangeum Dan clan, who claim descent from, a Ming Dynasty official whose great-great-grandson Dan Hui-sang was dispatched to Korea during the 1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Korea
  • *The, who claim descent from Dan Gan-mok, an official under Chungnyeol of Goryeo.
  • The second most common, Hot Dan, means "single" or "one". This character is also used to write the Chinese surname now pronounced Shàn in Mandarin.
  • The least common, Kkeut Dan, means "end".

Statistics

In South Korea, the 2000 census found 1,429 people belonging to 437 households with the surname Dan meaning "stairs". There were also 122 people belonging to 40 households with the surname Dan meaning "single", and 34 people belonging to nine households with the surname Dan meaning "end".
According to statistics cited by Patrick Hanks, there were 284 people on the island of Great Britain and 13 people on the island of Ireland with the surname Dan as of 2011. There had been 177 bearers of the surname in Great Britain in 1881, primarily in Devonshire and Cornwall.
The 2010 United States census found 2,599 people with the surname Dan, making it the 12,012th-most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 2,315 in the 2000 Census. In both censuses, about half of the bearers of the surname identified as White, and one-quarter as Asian. Dan was the 1,670th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.

People

Chinese surnames Dān () and Dàn ()

Japanese surnames Dan ()

Romanian

Other