Kalninš

surname · Latin script

Kalninš is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Latvia than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: topographic name from kalns ‘mountain’, or habitational name from a place named with this word.

rarermore common
  • LVLatvia≈1 in 772(inferred from the name graph)
  • FIFinland1 in 53K
  • NONorway1 in 64K

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.

Latvia (inferred from the name graph)

≈2,400 people, est.

Sources
96 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 772 (inferred from the name graph)

Latvia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kalnins in US United States, NO Norway, SE Sweden and Kalniņš in LV Latvia, EE Estonia.

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)

topographic name from kalns ‘mountain’, or habitational name from a place named with this word.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kalninš 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.

Where Kalninš is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
LV Latvia#3≈2,400 est.≈1 in 772—Kalniņš73
US United States—3281 in 1M366Kalnins96
FI Finland—1051 in 53K105—1
NO Norway—861 in 64K86Kalnins7
SE Sweden—721 in 142K72Kalnins11
EE Estonia—≈9 est.≈1 in 140KlistedKalniņš3

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Kalninš is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Kalniņš, Kalnins, Kalnin̦š

  • Polish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland

    Also written Kalnins, Kalniņš, Kalnińş

1 further group record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 4 sources across 2 countries.

Reference works 1

  • Wikipedia surname tokens

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 Kalninš mean, and where does it come from?
topographic name from kalns ‘mountain’, or habitational name from a place named with this word. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Kalninš have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 2.4 thousand people named Kalninš in Latvia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kalniņš.
How common is the name Kalninš?
In the United States, the national register counted 328 people named Kalninš in 2010, about 1 in 1.0 million residents.
How common is Kalninš compared with other names?
In Latvia, Kalninš is the 3rd most common surname of 60,294 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kalninš?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kalnin%C5%A1

The 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, “Kalninš” — the 3rd most common surname in Latvia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kalninš parses inside a full name →