Željko

given name · Latin script

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

Željko is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name. Recorded meaning: A hypocoristic form of željeti (“to wish, want”).

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 112(measured from records)
  • RSSerbia≈1 in 432
  • BABosnia & Herzegovina≈1 in 1.1K

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.

Croatia (measured from records)

37,869 people, 2021

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
128 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 112 (inferred from the name graph)

Croatia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ŽeljkoLatin(measured from records)
ЖељкоCyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Zeljko in CN China.

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)

A hypocoristic form of željeti (“to wish, want”).

Sources 1

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Željko 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 Željko is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HR Croatia#1537,8691 in 11238KŽeljko116
RS Serbia#44≈16,000 est.≈1 in 432—Željko68
BA Bosnia & Herzegovina#6≈3,500 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Željko38
CN China—≈2,600 est.≈1 in 528K—Zeljko7
SI Slovenia#2851,9551 in 1.1K2KŽeljko26
ME Montenegro#22≈240 est.≈1 in 2.5K#2Željko31

37,869 people counted by DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form), 2021. 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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); SURS — resident population given names; the me-monstat-census-ranked 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • English given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Austria, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Zeljko

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Zeljko, Z̆eljko

  • Slovak given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Slovakia, Czechia, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan

    Languages: Slovak, Czech

    Also written Zeljko, Źeljko, Żeljko

  • Russian given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Желько, Zeljko, Жэлька

35 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)

1950196019701980Željko Ražnatović, b. 1952Željko Reiner, b. 1953Željko Ivanek, b. 1957Željko Obradović, b. 1960Željko Šturanović, b. 1960Željko Komšić, b. 1964Željko Petrović, b. 1965Željko Milinovič, b. 1969Željko Joksimović, b. 1972Željko Rebrača, b. 1972

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 13 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Željko
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)202138K#10
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)202133K—
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20212K#118
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20202K#116
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20242K#120
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20252K#117
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—1.9K#256
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20221.9K#119
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20231.9K#119
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20191.9K#118
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20181.9K#118
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20171.8K#121

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name 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 Željko mean, and where does it come from?
A hypocoristic form of željeti (“to wish, want”). Recorded by Wiktionary.
Is Željko a male or female name?
Željko 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.
In which country does Željko have the most bearers?
In Croatia, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Željko, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled željko.
Where is Željko most common?
Željko is densest in Croatia, where the national register counts about 1 in 112 people carrying it.
How common is the name Željko?
In Croatia, the national register counted 37,869 people named Željko in 2021, about 1 in 112 residents.
How common is Željko compared with other names?
In Croatia, Željko is the 15th most common given name of 14,066 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Željko?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C5%BEeljko

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, “Željko” — the 15th most common given name in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Željko parses inside a full name →