Gan (surname)
Gan is a surname. It may be a Latin-alphabet spelling of four different Chinese surnames (; respectively pronounced in Mandarin as ), a Korean surname (; written using the same character as the Chinese surname Jiǎn), and a surname in other cultures. Origins. As a Chinese surname, Gan may be one of the following surnames, listed by their spelling in Pinyin, which reflects the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation: As a Korean surname, Gan is the Revised Romanization of Korean spelling of the surname written using the hanja (), the same one which is used to write the Chinese surname Jiǎn mentioned above . The bearers of this surname in Korea identify with a number of "bon-gwan", which are hometowns of a clan lineage. The most common of these is the . The clan's founding ancestor Gan Gyun (), an official under Myeongjong of Goryeo, settled in Gapyeong County, Gyeonggi Province, which became the clan hometown. Gan may also be an Irish surname, originating from . Another surname with the same origin is McGann. The Ashkenazi Jewish surnames Gan () and Gang are short for Gangolf, which itself originated by metathesis from the German masculine given name Wolfgang. Gan is further the origin of the patronymic  surnames Ganer, Ganel, and Ganet. Gan also coincidentally means "garden" in Modern Hebrew. Statistics. According to statistics cited by Patrick Hanks, 328 people on the island of Great Britain and eight on the island of Ireland bore the surname Gan as of 2011. In 1881 there had been 40 people in Great Britain with the surname Gan, primarily at Durham, Northumberland, Lancashire, Argyll, and London. The 2000 South Korean census found 2,429 people in 753 households with the surname spelled Gan in Revised Romanization. The 2010 United States Census found 2,891 people with the surname Gan, making it the 11,003rd -most-common name in the country. This represented an increase from 2,301 (12,343rd-most-common) in the 2000 Census. In the 2010 census, about three-quarters of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian (up from three-fifths in the 2000 census), and two-tenths as White (down from three-tenths in the 2000 census). It was the 310th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.