Bonk
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bonk is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In English, recorded as To strike or collide with something.
- UAUkraine≈1 in 86Kas Бонк(inferred from the name graph)
- RURussia≈1 in 972Kas Бонк
- PLPoland1 in 15K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bonk itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- 1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
2,726 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Бонк in UA Ukraine, RU Russia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
To strike or collide with something.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Bonk is read(measured from records)
Bonk is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English71%
To strike or collide with something.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German14%
Familienname aus Übername zu poln. bąk 'Rohrdommel; Viehbremse' oder in Einzelfällen diminutiv zu Bohn(e); Bearer: 1402+13.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
from Polish bąk 'bittern, horsefly'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bonk counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
2,726 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); MVČR — living population register 2017; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Bonk is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, lump, clod
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Georg Bonkb. 1917PLGerman soldier and Knight's Cross recipient
- Natalya Bonkb. 1924RURussian linguist
- Ulrich E. W. Bonkb. 1940DEGerman university teacher
- Gerd Bonkb. 1951DEGerman weightlifter (1951–2014)
- Keiko Bonkb. 1954USAmerican activist and politician
- Sigmund Bonkb. 1959DEGerman philosopher
- Radek Bonkb. 1976CZCzech ice hockey player
- Bartłomiej Bonkb. 1984PLPolish weightlifter
- Julia Bonkb. 1986DEGerman politician
- Oliver Bonkb. 2005CACanadian ice hockey player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 24 sources across 14 countries.
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bonk mean, and where does it come from?
- To strike or collide with something. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Bonk?
- In the etymology graph, Boink is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Bonk have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.7 thousand people named Bonk, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bonk.
- Where is Bonk most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bonk is densest in Poland — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bonk?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,726 people named Bonk in 2010, about 1 in 122 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bonk?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bonkThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Bonk”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.