Novàk

surname · Latin script

Novàk is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Slovenia it is the 3rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: Usually from Czech Novák or Slovak Novák, but possibly also from Serbo-Croatian Nȍvāk, Slovene Novák, or Hungarian Novák. The meaning newcomer, novice is equivalent to the native surname Neumann.

rarermore common
  • SISlovenia1 in 200(measured from records)
  • HRCroatia1 in 392
  • USUnited States1 in 9.4K

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 Novàk 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)

35,461 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
198 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 200 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NovàkLatin(measured from records)
НовакCyrillic(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Novak in US United States, HR Croatia, SI Slovenia and Novac in RO Romania.

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)

Derivation of Novàk: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Novàk
  1. Czech Novákor(measured from records)
  2. Serbo-CroatianNȍvāk(measured from records)

Usually from Czech Novák or Slovak Novák, but possibly also from Serbo-Croatian Nȍvāk, Slovene Novák, or Hungarian Novák. The meaning newcomer, novice is equivalent to the native surname Neumann

Sources 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Novàk 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 Novàk is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—35,4611 in 9.4K35KNovak198
CZ Czechia—33,8701 in 31634K—1
HR Croatia#410,7941 in 39211KNovak124
SI Slovenia#310,5101 in 20011KNovak84
BR Brazil—5,1551 in 41K5.2K—2
SK Slovakia—4,8791 in 1.1K4.9K—1
RO Romania—≈4,200 est.≈1 in 5.1K—Novac26

35,461 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; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census). 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)

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

  • English surname62 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Czechia, Canada

    Languages: English, Czech, German

    Also written Novak, Novák, Nowak, โนวัค, Novice

  • Korean surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Korea, North Korea, Canada

    Also written Novak, 노백, Novák

5 further groups 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)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Novàk under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Novàk mean, and where does it come from?
Usually from Czech Novák or Slovak Novák, but possibly also from Serbo-Croatian Nȍvāk, Slovene Novák, or Hungarian Novák. The meaning newcomer, novice is equivalent to the native surname Neumann Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
In which country does Novàk have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 35 thousand people named Novàk, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled novak.
Where is Novàk most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Novàk is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 200 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Novàk?
In the United States, the national register counted 35,461 people named Novàk in 2010, about 1 in 9.4 thousand residents.
How common is Novàk compared with other names?
In Slovenia, Novàk is the 3rd most common surname of 13,062 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Novàk?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nov%C3%A0k

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, “Novàk” — the 3rd most common surname in Slovenia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Novàk parses inside a full name →