Anka
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Croatian: a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/âːnka/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Anka is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country, where it is the 35th most common given name.
- HRCroatia1 in 245(measured from records)
- BGBulgaria≈1 in 1.4K
- RSSerbia≈1 in 3.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Anka itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Croatia (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 114 (measured from records)
- 1 in 245 (inferred from the name graph)
17,231 people, 2021
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
How Anka is read(measured from records)
Anka is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Croatian71%
a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie
as a wordrecorded as Serbo-Croatiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German5.6%
weibl. Vom., niederdeutsche oder pol nische (auch bulgarische, slowenische) Kose form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- English5.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Anka in English.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Anka 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR Croatia | #35 | 17,231 | 1 in 245 | 17K | Anka | 45 |
| BG Bulgaria | #202 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Anka | 48 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 1 | Anka | 114 |
| RS Serbia | #263 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.1K | listed | Anka | 29 |
| SI Slovenia | #429 | 872 | 1 in 2.4K | 872 | Anka | 17 |
| MK North Macedonia | — | 761as Анка | 1 in 2.8K | 761 | Anka | 9 |
17,231 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); the de-leipzig-vornamen register; SURS — resident population given names; State Statistical Office — living population names. 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)
Anka is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Diminutif slave d’Anna; variante liée à Anne, donc « grâce ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In Russian, dim of Anna.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Latvian, rope used to fasten a sail to a mast
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kea, hip (upper part of the leg)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Anka Obrenovićb. 1821RSMember of the House of Obrenovic
- Anka Krizmanićb. 1896HRCroatian painter (1896–1987)
- Anka Bergmanb. 1917GBCzech Holocaust survivor
- Anka Muhlsteinb. 1935FRFrench historian and writer
- Anka Khristolovab. 1955BGBulgarian former volleyball player
- Anka Bakovab. 1957BGBulgarian rower
- Anka Georgievab. 1959BGBulgarian rower
- Anka Mrak Taritašb. 1959HRCroatian politician
- Anka Schmidb. 1961CHSwiss screenwriter (born 1961)
- Anka Feldhusenb. 1966DEGerman diplomat
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)
Attested in 52 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 17K | #47 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 12K | — |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2008 | 985 | #184 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2009 | 971 | #185 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2010 | 964 | #186 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2011 | 959 | #191 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2012 | 953 | #195 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 872 | #222 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 861 | #435 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene | 2025 | 1 | #1 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene | 2015 | 1 | — |
| DE Germany | Stadt München Open Data — Vornamen von Nulljährigen | 2025 | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- What does the name Anka mean, and where does it come from?
- a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Anka?
- A machine transcription gives /âːnka/ (IPA) for Croatian.
- Is Anka a male or female name?
- Anka is a female 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 are other forms of the name Anka?
- In the etymology graph, Ana, Ann and Nancy are forms of the same name in other languages; Ankica is a recorded short or pet form; it is recorded as a short form of Jana.
- In which country does Anka have the most bearers?
- In Croatia, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Anka, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled anka.
- Where is Anka most common?
- Anka is densest in Croatia, where the national register counts about 1 in 245 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Anka?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 17,231 people named Anka in 2021, about 1 in 245 residents.
- How common is Anka compared with other names?
- In Croatia, Anka is the 35th most common given name of 14,066 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Anka?
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/ankaThe 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, “Anka” — the 35th most common given name in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.