Václav
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: CZSO, 2024
/ˈvaːt͡slaf/(recorded in a dictionary) Czech · from Wiktionary
Václav is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Slovakia than in any other country. In Czechia it is the 24th most common given name. Recorded meaning: Contraction of a Slavic (Old Czech Vácslav) name, appearing in English as Wenceslaus, from Proto-Slavic *Vęťeslavъ, from *vęťьjь (“greater, more”) + *slava (“fame, glory”).
- SKSlovakia≈1 in 5.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- HRCroatia1 in 92K
- SESweden1 in 237K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Slovakia (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 163 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Slovakia, 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 Vaclav in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CH Switzerland 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)- Proto-Slavic*Vęťeslavъ(measured from records)
- Proto-Slavic root*vęťьjь“greater“greater, more”(measured from records)
Contraction of a Slavic (Old Czech Vácslav) name, appearing in English as Wenceslaus, from Proto-Slavic *Vęťeslavъ, from *vęťьjь (“greater, more”) + *slava (“fame, glory”).
Cited for this meaning 2
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Václav 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SK Slovakia | #236 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 494 | Václav | 47 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈410 est. | ≈1 in 204K | 1 | Václav | 25 |
| US United States | — | 264 | 1 in 1.3M | 262 | Vaclav | 140 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 501K | listed | Vaclav | 63 |
| CH Switzerland | — | ≈88 est. | ≈1 in 102K | — | Vaclav | 17 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈80 est. | ≈1 in 114K | 7 | Václav | 11 |
| CY Cyprus | — | ≈70 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Vaclav | 5 |
| HR Croatia | — | 46 | 1 in 92K | 46 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | #24 | 14 | 1 in 764K | 124K | Václav | 163 |
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: MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); the de-leipzig-vornamen register; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024). 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Václav is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Czech form of WENCESLAS . Feminine form: Václava .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Václav Havelb. 1936CZCzech statesman, playwright, and former dissident, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic (1936–2011)
- Václav Klausb. 1941CZPresident of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013
- Václav Pilařb. 1988CZCzech footballer
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Which countries have the most people named Václav?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.1 thousand people named Václav in Slovakia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled václav. After it come Germany, United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Is Václav a male or female name?
- Václav is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Václav mean, and where does it come from?
- Contraction of a Slavic (Old Czech Vácslav) name, appearing in English as Wenceslaus, from Proto-Slavic *Vęťeslavъ, from *vęťьjь (“greater, more”) + *slava (“fame, glory”). Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- What are other forms of the name Václav?
- In the etymology graph, Vyacheslav, Slava and Veaceslav are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Václav?
- It depends on the language: in Czech /ˈvaːt͡slaf/ (Wiktionary); in Slovak /ˈʋaːt͡s.ɫaw/ (Wiktionary).
- How common is the name Václav?
- In the United States, the national register counted 264 people named Václav in 2020, about 1 in 1.3 million residents.
- How common is Václav compared with other names?
- In Slovakia, Václav is the 236th most common given name of 9,943 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Václav?
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/v%C3%A1clavThe 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, “Václav” — the 236th most common given name in Slovakia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.