Can
About 554 American babies have been named Can since 1970, most of them around 2018. In 2025 it ranked 7,194th. About 540 Cans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Can
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 554
- Estimated living today
- 540
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2018
- Best rank
- 3,607th
- Rank in 2025
- 7,194th
- First recorded
- 1970
How old the living Cans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 554 babies given the name since 1970, about 540 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Cans
- Can Yaman (born 1989)Turkish actor and fashion model
- Can Bonomo (born 1987)Turkish singer
- Can Uzun (born 2005)Turkish association football player
- Can Dündar (born 1961)Turkish journalist
- Joseph-Marie Trịnh Văn Căn (1921–1990)Vietnamese cardinal
- Can Yücel (1926–1999)Turkish poet
- Can Bartu (1936–2019)Turkish association football player
- Can Bozdoğan (born 2001)Turkish-German association football player
People named Can with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Can is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Can is most concentrated in Florida (10.2×), California (5.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2018
The most popular boys’ names the year Can peaked:
Can elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Can | 625 | 651st |
| Switzerland boys | Can | 498 | 288th |
| England and Wales boys | Can | 283 | 644th |
| Belgium boys | Can | 221 | 516th |
| Poland boys | Can | 21 birth registrations | 357th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Can: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Can | 459 | 0.037% | 207th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Can | 37 | 0.009% | 253rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Can | 2 | 0.003% | 195th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Can is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.08% of children were given it – 30 of them.
Can: rank by region
In 2024, Can was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Can | 632 | 8 |
In 2023, Can was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Can | 325 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Can | 258 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Can appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (259th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Can by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 110 | 157th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Can among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Can | 46 | 136 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Can against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.