Potočnik

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/pot̪otʂnik/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Potočnik is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Slovenia than in any other country, where it is the 31st most common surname.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 1.6M(measured from records)
  • SISlovenia1 in 468
  • HRCroatia1 in 19K

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.

Slovenia (measured from records)

4,494 people

Sources
104 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 468 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Potocnik in US United States, CH Switzerland.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Potočnik 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 Potočnik is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SI Slovenia#314,4941 in 4684.5KPotočnik32
HR Croatia—2191 in 19K219Potočnik22
US United States—2111 in 1.6M224Potocnik104
CH Switzerland—551 in 153K55Potocnik4
AR Argentina—251 in 1.8M25—1
RS Serbia—≈11 est.≈1 in 649K—Potočnik4

4,494 people counted by stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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: stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)

Potočnik is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Potocnik

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Slovenia, Spain

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Potocnik, Potočník

  • Arabic surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Slovenia

    Also written Potocnik

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Slovenia

    Also written Potocnik

23 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Herman Potočnik, b. 1892Jure Potočnik, b. 1949Tone Potočnik, b. 1951Franc Potočnik, b. 1955Vika Potočnik, b. 1957Borut Potočnik, b. 1969Gašper Potočnik, b. 1980Jernej Potočnik, b. 1981Gregor Potočnik, b. 1992Nina Potočnik, b. 1997

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)

FormalPoštovani Potočnik,Dear Potočnik, (English)
InformalPoštovani Potočnik,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 6 sources across 2 countries.

Official registers attesting Potočnik
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—4.5K#7
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)2021219#3,805
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)2021181—

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

How do you pronounce Potočnik?
A machine transcription gives /pot̪otʂnik/ (IPA) for Croatian.
In which country does Potočnik have the most bearers?
In Slovenia, the national register counted about 4.5 thousand people named Potočnik, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled potočnik.
Where is Potočnik most common?
Potočnik is densest in Slovenia, where the national register counts about 1 in 468 people carrying it.
How common is the name Potočnik?
In Slovenia, the national register counted 4,494 people named Potočnik, about 1 in 468 residents.
How common is Potočnik compared with other names?
In Slovenia, Potočnik is the 31st most common surname of 13,062 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Potočnik?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/poto%C4%8Dnik

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, “Potočnik” — the 31st most common surname in Slovenia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Potočnik parses inside a full name →