Gan is a surname. It may be a Latin-alphabet spelling of four different Chinese surnames, a Korean surname, 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:
Gān. Ancient sources differ on the origin of this surname. Yuanhe Xingzuan states that the first bearer of the surname was an official in the court of King Wu Ding, while ' states that it originated as a toponymic surname, referring to a place called Gan District, located in what is now Huyi District, Xi'an, Shaanxi, where some descendants of King Wen of Zhou had settled.
Gān, homophonous with the above surname in Mandarin Chinese, though not in other varieties of Chinese. According to the ', this also originated as a toponymic surname, referring to a place called Gan District, located in what is now Jiangdu District, Yangzhou, Jiangsu; following the defeat of the State of Han by the State of Wu, some former residents of Han fled to Gan District and took Gan as their new surname.
Yán, spelled Gan based on its Hokkien pronunciation. Again, traditional sources mention two different origins for this surname: according to Yuanhe Xingzuan, the first bearer of the surname was Yi Fu, a great grandson of, while the Tongzhi encyclopedia says that it originated as a toponymic surname, as the descendants of Bo Qin took the surname Yan in reference to one of his vassal states, Yan District. The spelling Gan of this surname is particularly common in Malaysia and Singapore, where many descendants of Chinese migrants can trace their roots to the Fujian province of China.
Jiǎn, spelled Gan based on its Cantonese pronunciation
As a Korean surname, Gan is the Revised Romanization of Korean spelling of the surname written using the hanja Daejjok Gan, 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 Mag Gana. 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 in the 2000 Census. In the 2010 census, about three-quarters of the bearers of the surname identified as Asian, and two-tenths as White. It was the 310th-most-common surname among respondents to the 2000 Census who identified as Asian.
