Novák
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/novaːk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Novák is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country. In Czechia it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: From nový (“new”), for "newcomer to the village". Derived in a similar way: Nowak.
- CZCzechia1 in 316(measured from records)
- SKSlovakia1 in 1.1K
- USUnited States1 in 9.4K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Novák 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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 483 (measured from records)
- 1 in 200 (inferred from the name graph)
198,125 named Nowak, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Novak in US United States, PL Poland, CZ Czechia and 1 more.
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)
From nový (“new”), for "newcomer to the village". Derived in a similar way: Nowak.
Sources 2
- Wiktionary
- Családnevek enciklopédiája
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Novák 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | — | 198,125as Nowak | 1 in 193 | 100K | Novak | 60 |
| US United States | #812 | 35,461 | 1 in 9.4K | 35K | Novak | 483 |
| CZ Czechia | #1 | 33,870 | 1 in 316 | 34K | Novak | 151 |
| HR Croatia | — | 10,794 | 1 in 392 | 11K | — | 3 |
| SI Slovenia | #178 | 10,510 | 1 in 200 | 11K | Novak | 48 |
| SK Slovakia | #37 | 4,879 | 1 in 1.1K | 4.9K | Novák | 79 |
198,125 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling nowak. 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); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Vítězslav Novákb. 1870CZCzech composer and pedagogue (1870-1949)
- Vilmos Aba-Novákb. 1894HUHungarian artist (1894–1941)
- Ilona Novákb. 1925HUHungarian swimmer (1925–2019)
- Éva Novákb. 1930HUHungarian swimmer (1930-2005)
- Ladislav Novákb. 1931CZCzech footballer (1931-2011)
- Dezső Novákb. 1939HUHungarian association footballer, trainer (1939–2014)
- Eduard Novákb. 1946CZCzech ice hockey player (1946-2010)
- Jiří Novákb. 1975CZCzech tennis player
- Katalin Novákb. 1977HUPresident of Hungary from 2022 to 2024
- Matěj Novákb. 1989CZCzech ice dancer
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 14 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 34K | #2 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 34K | #2 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 34K | #3 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 4.9K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 74 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 74 | #37,467 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 46 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 46 | #53,250 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- What does the name Novák mean, and where does it come from?
- From nový (“new”), for "newcomer to the village". Derived in a similar way: Nowak. Recorded by Wiktionary and Családnevek enciklopédiája.
- How do you pronounce Novák?
- A machine transcription gives /novaːk/ (IPA) for Czech.
- What are other forms of the name Novák?
- In the etymology graph, Nowak is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Novák have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 198 thousand people named Nowak, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Novák most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Novák is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 200 people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Novák?
- In the United States, the national register counted 35,461 people named Novák in 2010, about 1 in 9.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Novák compared with other names?
- In Czechia, Novák is the most common surname of 114,573 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Novák?
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/nov%C3%A1kThe 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, “Novák” — the most common surname in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.