In the Bible, it is associated with the ‘Promised Land’: Canaan is originally the name of a region where Israel is located today. The word is derived from Hebrew Kena’an, which probably means ‘low’ or ‘humble’.
Canaan is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Canaan isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Canaan ranks 817. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 1 were named Canaan. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Canaan.
In the Bible, it is associated with the ‘Promised Land’: Canaan is originally the name of a region where Israel is located today. The word is derived from Hebrew Kena’an, which probably means ‘low’ or ‘humble’.
As a first name,... Canaan is in use since the 1970s and is only known in the US.
Canaan is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Then, unexpectedly, Canaan cried out for attention, reaching its peak in popularity at #632 in our SmartGenius statistics in the year 2016. People over 50 probably didn't have classmates named Canaan, for there were many years in which not a single parent chose this first name for their son. Although it also has never been in the top 100 of most popular first names, Canaan seems to have been in vogue for a while, especially since the beginning of the new millennium.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Canaan was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
240 babies were named Canaan in 2022 - that's 1 in 686,919 newborn boys. With this number, the boys' name Canaan ranked 883 in our SmartGenius first name statistics in 2022, the most recent year for which records are available.
You may not know anyone named Canaan, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 32 states are home to men and boys named Canaan. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few men and boys named Canaan living in one state or another. If your name is Canaan and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In Tennessee, which has the most people named Canaan relative to the population, you still have to ask 11,205 men and boys their names before you hear Canaan as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for boys’ names. This is because 5.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With six letters, the name Canaan is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
With 5.2% of all boys' names that begin with a C, this first letter is thus much more common than the average of all letters. And which boys’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Charles.
If your name is Canaan and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Canaan, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Nut
Apple
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Canaan
Canaan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
N
A
A
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
C
A
N
A
A
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Canaan sounds like this:
