Franks
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘son of Frank’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹæŋks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Franks is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Hong Kong it is the 89th most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 817as Frank(measured from records)
- HKHong Kong≈1 in 1.1Kas Frankie
- DKDenmark1 in 588as Frank
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 Franks 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 482 (measured from records)
- 1 in 588 (inferred from the name graph)
407,086 named Frank, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark, as Frank
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Frankie in US United States, NO Norway, DK Denmark and 1 more and Franke in SE Sweden.
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)
‘son of Frank’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Franks 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #786 | 407,086as Frank | 1 in 817 | 406K | Frankie | 482 |
| BR Brazil | — | 15,670as Frank | 1 in 14K | 17K | — | 3 |
| SE Sweden | — | 11,775as Frank | 1 in 866 | 12K | Franke | 35 |
| DK Denmark | — | 9,987as Frank | 1 in 588 | 10K | Frankie | 21 |
| NO Norway | — | 9,080as Frank | 1 in 602 | 27K | Frankie | 19 |
| HK Hong Kong | #89 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Frankie | 89 |
407,086 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling frank. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Franks is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, By derivation this name means the Frenchman. A few isolated references to it occur in mediaeval Irish records. Families of Franks or Frank (formerly used synonymously) became established in Ireland in the seventeenth century and have since been prominent as Anglo-Irish gentry in Cos. Leix and Offaly. Frankford (now Kilcormac again) was named from them
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Latvian, Rietumģermāņu ciltis, kas mūsu ēras pirmā gadu tūkstoša pirmajā pusē iekaroja Galliju
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Naudas pamatvienība Francijā, Beļģijā un Luksemburgā līdz 2002. g.
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Naudas pamatvienība Šveicē un vairākās citās valstīs
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Sīknaudas vienība Marokā, dirhēma simtā daļa
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Oliver Franks, Baron Franksb. 1905GBEnglish civil servant and philosopher (1905–1992)
- Mike Franksb. 1936USUS tennis player
- Lynn Johnstonb. 1947CAnot in their usual nameCanadian cartoonist
- Gary Franksb. 1953USAmerican politician (born 1953)
- Philip Franksb. 1956GBactor and theatre director (born 1956)
- Trent Franksb. 1957USAmerican politician
- Steve Franksb. 1965USAmerican television director, producer and writer
- Tanya Franksb. 1967GBBritish actor, writer and producer
- Ben Franksb. 1984AUNew Zealand rugby union player
- Owen Franksb. 1987NZNew Zealand rugby union player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 30K | #1,165 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 30K | #1,080 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 29K | #1,186 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 196 | — |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 191 | #12,091 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 188 | #25,791 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 173 | #27,434 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 166 | #42,753 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1990 | 156 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1980 | 87 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1980 | 69 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1970 | 51 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Franks mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘son of Frank’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Franks?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹæŋks/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Franks have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 407 thousand people named Frank, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Franks most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Franks itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Denmark's: the national register counts about 1 in 588 people named Frank.
- How common is the name Franks?
- In the United States, the national register counted 407,086 people named Frank in 2020, about 1 in 817 residents.
- How common is Franks compared with other names?
- In the United States, Franks is the 786th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Franks?
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/franksThe 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, “Franks” — the 786th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.