Turk

surname · Latin script

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

Turk is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Dominica it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: (i) medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a Turk; (ii) from the medieval personal name Turk; (iii) shortened form of McTurk; (iv) Jewish surname denoting a Jew from Turkey or the Ottoman E.

rarermore common
  • SYSyria≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 16K
  • USUnited States1 in 32K

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)

10,354 people, 2010

Sources
394 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 652 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

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)

(i) medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a Turk; (ii) from the medieval personal name Turk; (iii) shortened form of McTurk; (iv) Jewish surname denoting a Jew from Turkey or the Ottoman Empire.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Turk 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 Turk is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—10,3541 in 32K10KTurk394
SI Slovenia—3,2271 in 6523.2K—39
EG Egypt—≈2,400 est.≈1 in 43K—Turk40
HR Croatia—1,7651 in 2.4K1.8K——
GB United Kingdom—≈1,700 est.≈1 in 38K1.4KTurk134
JO Jordan—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 7.1K—Turk24
SY Syria—≈1,400 est.≈1 in 14K—Turk14
NL Netherlands—1,0851 in 16K1.1KTurk45
DM Dominica#1———Turk1

10,354 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

Turk is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Ukrainian surname45 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Croatia, United States

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Croatian

    Also written Турок, Турк, Turok, Тюрк, Türk

  • Spanish surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Türkiye, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Türk, Tùrk, ̈turk, Tūrk, Tǘrk

  • French surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Türkiye, Belgium

    Also written Türk, Tůrk, Tūrk, Tùrk

  • Turkish surname19 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Israel, Syria, United States

    Languages: Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic

    Also written Türk, טורק, Turek, Tork, Tourk

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Tu̇rk, Türk

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Pakistan, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Tŭrk, Tűrk

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Poland, United States, Netherlands

    Also written Türk

51 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)

Turk 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, nickname from OFr turc ‘Turk’; first attested Turch, Turcus 1066 DB (C)

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In English, A speaker of the various Turkic languages.

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

  • In Italian, Variante di Turchi

    as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani

  • In Irish, Either for MacTurk (Mac Tuirc), a Scottish name found in Antrim, or more often an abbreviated form of Turkington

    as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland

  • In Afrikaans, Turk (person from Turkey or of Turkish descent)

    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)

18501900195020002050Roy Turk, b. 1892Alojzij Turk, b. 1909Stella Turk, b. 1925Godwin Turk, b. 1950Elizabeth Turk, b. 1961John Turk, b. 1962Željko Turk, b. 1962Gavin Turk, b. 1967Matt Turk, b. 1968Martin Turk, b. 2003

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 41 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Turk
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201010K#3,450
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200010K#3,277
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020209.8K#3,537
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—3.2K#13
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20211.8K#238
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)20211.5K—
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)20021.4K#5,050
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.1K#1,558
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 7

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 Turk mean, and where does it come from?
(i) medieval nickname for someone thought to resemble a Turk; (ii) from the medieval personal name Turk; (iii) shortened form of McTurk; (iv) Jewish surname denoting a Jew from Turkey or the Ottoman E… Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Turk have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 10 thousand people named Turk, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled turk.
Where is Turk most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Turk is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 652 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Turk?
In the United States, the national register counted 10,354 people named Turk in 2010, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
How common is Turk compared with other names?
In Dominica, Turk is the most common surname of 841 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Turk?

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Turk” — the most common surname in Dominica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Turk parses inside a full name →