Kótai
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kotɒji/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kótai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Típusa: Helynévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Az alapjául szolgáló településnév eredete vitatott.
- HUHungary≈1 in 25K(inferred from the name graph)
- CZCzechia1 in 630K
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 1.5M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Hungary (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 39 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
≈400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hungary, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kotai in NL Netherlands.
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)
Típusa: Helynévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Az alapjául szolgáló településnév eredete vitatott. Kót ~ Kóta ~ Kótaj nevű településünk volt Békés, Bihar, Nógrád, Szabolcs, Szerém, Vas, Zala, Zaránd vármegyében. Nevük egyik vélemény szerint a szláv ’szöglet, sarok’ jelentésű kot szóra vezethető vissza. Mások szerint a magyar hangutánzó *kot szó az alapja, amelynek jelentése ’kopog’, mivel a gyakran száraz talajon az emberek és állatok lába kemény hangot adott. Legvalószínűbbnek látszik a nyelvjárási ’gödör, iszapos tó, kátyú’ jelentésű kotó ~ kotu helynevekből való eredeztetés, amelyek alapján a lápos, sáros gödrös helyek mellett épült települések kapták meg ezt a nevet. Bármiként is jött létre a településnév, megkapta az ’onnan/oda való’ jelentésű -i képzőt, s eredetre, származási helyre utaló családnévvé vált. Elterjedtsége: A nyelvterület keleti, északkeleti részén, Borsodban, Hajdúságban és Kárpátalján gyakoribb.
Sources 1
- Családnevek enciklopédiája
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kótai 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU Hungary | #680 | ≈400 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Kótai | 39 |
| BR Brazil | — | 68 | 1 in 3.1M | 68 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | — | 17 | 1 in 630K | 17 | — | — |
| IN India | — | 17 | 1 in 78M | 17 | — | — |
| PL Poland | — | 14 | 1 in 2.7M | 8 | — | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 1.5M | — | Kotai | 2 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 3 | 1 in 1.7M | 3 | — | — |
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); MVČR — living population register 2017; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Lajos Kótaib. 1846HUteacher (1846–1918)
- Ferenc Lajos Kotaib. 1908HU(1908-1970) potter and teacher
- Tamás Kótaib. 1959HUHungarian painter (born 1959)
- Aladár Kótaib. 1967HUmayor of Felsőgagy (2019–)
- Mihály Kótaib. 1976HUHungarian boxer
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 6 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 17 | #58,628 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #271,077 |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- How do you pronounce Kótai?
- A machine transcription gives /kotɒji/ (IPA) for Hungarian.
- What does the name Kótai mean?
- Recorded meaning: Típusa: Helynévi eredetű, magyar családnév. Eredete: Az alapjául szolgáló településnév eredete vitatott.
- In which country does Kótai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 395 people named Kótai in Hungary, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kótai.
- How common is the name Kótai?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 68 people named Kótai, about 1 in 3.1 million residents.
- How common is Kótai compared with other names?
- In Hungary, Kótai is the 680th most common surname of 88,284 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kótai?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/k%C3%B3taiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
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, “Kótai” — the 680th most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.