Lucian is the English form of the Latin Lucianus, derived from Lucius and the word lux, so it means "light". The satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote some of the wittiest prose of antiquity, and painter Lucian Freud carried the name in the 20th century. In the United States Lucian has been in the top 1000 since 2005 and has moved up from the 600s to number 462 in 2025, its best rank so far.