Zając

surname · Latin script

Meaning: hare, jackrabbit (any lagomorph of the genus Lepus)

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Zając is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • PLPoland1 in 717(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 53K
  • USUnited States1 in 63K

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.

Poland (measured from records)

53,382 people, 2026

Sources
314 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 717 (inferred from the name graph)

Poland

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 Zajac in US United States, PL Poland, GB United Kingdom and 5 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)

hare, jackrabbit (any lagomorph of the genus Lepus)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Zając 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 Zając is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PL Poland#1553,3821 in 71727KZajac128
CN China—≈25,000 est.≈1 in 57K—Zajac4
US United States—5,2701 in 63K5.3KZajac314
SK Slovakia#1332,0721 in 2.6K2.1KZajac54
GB United Kingdom—≈1,200 est.≈1 in 53K345Zajac94
CZ Czechia—6271 in 17K627Zajac45
NO Norway—3921 in 14K392Zajac9
BZ Belize#207≈33 est.≈1 in 12K—Zajac1

53,382 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling zając. 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); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); MVČR — living population register 2017; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)

Zając is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Zaja̧c, Zajâc, Zajaç, Zajac

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Zajac, Zajãc

  • Russian surname27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Заяц, Заяць, Zayats, Zajac, Заятс

  • Italian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, United Kingdom

    Also written Zajac, Zajãc

  • Croatian surname16 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian

    Also written Zajac, Zajač, Zajać, Зајац, Zaja̧c

  • Danish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Sweden, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Danish, Swedish

    Also written Zajac

15 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)

1850190019502000Józef Zając, b. 1891Jan Zając, b. 1939Jerzy Zając, b. 1947Stanisław Zając, b. 1949Tadeusz Zając, b. 1950Elżbieta Zającówna, b. 1958Ryszard Zając, b. 1959Bogdan Zając, b. 1972Marek Zając, b. 1973Aneta Zając, b. 1982

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)

FormalSzanowni Państwo,Dear Zając, (English)
InformalSzanowni Państwo,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 2 countries.

Official registers attesting Zając
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202627K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—27K#21
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202627K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—27K#24

Reference works 5

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 Zając mean, and where does it come from?
hare, jackrabbit (any lagomorph of the genus Lepus) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Zając?
A machine transcription gives /zajɔnt͡s/ (IPA) for Polish.
In which country does Zając have the most bearers?
In Poland, the national register counted about 53 thousand people named Zając, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zajac.
Where is Zając most common?
Zając is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 717 people carrying it.
How common is the name Zając?
In Poland, the national register counted 53,382 people named Zając in 2026, about 1 in 717 residents.
How common is Zając compared with other names?
In Poland, Zając is the 15th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Zając?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/zaj%C4%85c

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, “Zając” — the 15th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zając parses inside a full name →