Kirk
given name · Latin script
Meaning: person who lives near a church or works in a church
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɝk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kirk is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Canada it is the 96th most common given name.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 680as Greg(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 842as Greg
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 880as Greg
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 Kirk 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #360 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 628 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈760,000 named Greg, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Greg in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 4 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)
person who lives near a church or works in a church
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)
Kirk 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈760,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Greg | 61 |
| US United States | #153 | 244,493as Craig | 1 in 1.4K | 244K | Greg | 628 |
| CA Canada | #96 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 842 | 3 | Greg | 335 |
| GB United Kingdom | #231 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 6 | Greg | 308 |
| AU Australia | #114 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 680 | 81 | Greg | 303 |
| NZ New Zealand | #96 | ≈5,600 est. | ≈1 in 880 | 12 | Greg | 165 |
| IE Ireland | #121 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 11 | Greg | 113 |
| GY Guyana | — | 152 | 1 in 4.9K | 338 | — | 6 |
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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); NSW BDM — Popular baby names (1952–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–present); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Kirk 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 English, dweller by the church; from ON kirkja; first attested Reginald Attekireke 1209 FFL
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
from northern Middle English, Danish kirk ‘church’ (Old Norse kirkja), a topographic name for someone who lived near a church.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Transferred use of the surname, originally a northern English and Scottish local name for someone who lived near a church (from Old Norse kirkja). Recent use has probably been influenced to some extent by the film actor Kirk Douglas, born in 1916 as Issur Danielovich Demsky.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A church.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, James Tiberius, Star Trek captain;
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Kirk Douglasb. 1916USAmerican actor (1916–2020)
- Kirk Kerkorianb. 1917USAmerican businessman, investor, and philanthropist (1917–2015)
- Michael Douglasb. 1944USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, producer and activist (born 1944)
- Kirk Hammettb. 1962USAmerican guitarist
- Kirk Wiseb. 1963USAmerican film director
- Kirk Jonesb. 1964GBBritish film director
- Andre Agassib. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican tennis player (born 1970)
- Kirk Cameronb. 1970USAmerican actor
- Kirk Acevedob. 1971USAmerican actor
- Kirk Baxterb. 1972AUAustralian film editor
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 69 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 55K | #840 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 152 | #443 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 89 | #840 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 52 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1995 | 10 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2023 | 6 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1993 | 6 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NISRA — Baby names Northern Ireland full list (1997–present) | 2004 | 4 | #264 |
| AU Australia | Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM) | 2003 | 4 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2023 | 3 | #728 |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
| AU Australia | AU state BDM — consolidated top baby names (NSW + SA + QLD) | 2015 | 1 | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- Is Kirk a male or female name?
- Kirk 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 Kirk mean, and where does it come from?
- person who lives near a church or works in a church Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Kirk?
- In Guyana, the national register counted 152 people named Kirk in 2025, about 1 in 4.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Kirk compared with other names?
- In Canada, Kirk is the 96th most common given name of 188,338 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Kirk?
- A machine transcription gives /kɝk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kirk have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 760 thousand people named Greg in China, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kirk most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kirk is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 4.9 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Kirk?
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/kirkThe 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, “Kirk” — the 96th most common given name in Canada. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.