Salk

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Jonas, US physician, scientist

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

Salk is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 904K(measured from records)
  • EEEstonia≈1 in 21K
  • IEIreland≈1 in 261K

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.

United States (measured from records)

368 people, 2010

Sources
195 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 21K (inferred from the name graph)

Estonia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Jonas, US physician, scientist

Sources 1

  • Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Salk 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 Salk is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3681 in 904K388Salk195
TR Türkiye≈160 est.≈1 in 500K—Salk9
IT Italy≈69 est.≈1 in 898K—Salk3
EE Estonia≈60 est.≈1 in 21K48—7
GB United Kingdom≈57 est.≈1 in 1.2M—Salk16
FI Finland211 in 265K21—1
IE Ireland≈20 est.≈1 in 261K—Salk1
DK Denmark181 in 326K18—1

368 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the ee-stat-nimed 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)

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

  • Arabic surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Kuwait, Morocco, Egypt, Syria

    Also written Śalk, Sàlk, Şalk

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Şalk

  • Estonian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Estonia, United States

    Also written Šalk

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States

    Also written Sâlk

36 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Salk is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Estonian, a small unorganised group (usually of people)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Croatian, američki mikrobiolog, pronalazač vakcine protiv do tada smrtonosne dječje bolesti poliomijelitisa (vakcina u primjeni od 1954); preventivnim cijepljenjem spasila milijune dječjih života

    as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export

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)

19001920194019601980Jonas Salk, b. 1914Anneli Salk, b. 1963Margit Salk, b. 1967

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 16 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Salk
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000388#50,572
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010368#55,741
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020336#64,041
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—48#2,015
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—37#2,804
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—21#42,198
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—18#25,222
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 Salk mean, and where does it come from?
Jonas, US physician, scientist Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
In which country does Salk have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 368 people named Salk, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled salk.
How common is the name Salk?
In the United States, the national register counted 368 people named Salk in 2010, about 1 in 904 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Salk?

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

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, “Salk”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Salk parses inside a full name →