Rorké
surname · Latin script
Rorké is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country. Recorded meaning: from the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’.
- USUnited States1 in 702K(measured from records)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 80K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 105K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 177 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 80K (inferred from the name graph)
≈710 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, 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 Rorke in US United States, AU Australia, GB United Kingdom and 4 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 the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’.
Sources 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rorké 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈710 est. | ≈1 in 80K | — | Rorke | 35 |
| US United States | 474 | 1 in 702K | 474 | Rorke | 177 |
| AU Australia | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 105K | — | Rorke | 68 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 367K | 164 | Rorke | 66 |
| CA Canada | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 327K | — | Rorke | 52 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 251K | — | Rorke | 11 |
| IE Ireland | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 272K | — | Rorke | 14 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Rorké mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Irish Gaelic personal name Ruarc, perhaps based on ruarc ‘rain squall’. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Rorké have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 706 people named Rorké in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rorke.
- How common is the name Rorké?
- In the United States, the national register counted 474 people named Rorké in 2010, about 1 in 702 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rorké?
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/rork%C3%A9The 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, “Rorké”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.