Names of Czechia CZ

MVČR — living population register 2017 records Jiří as the commonest given name in the Czechia and Nováková as the commonest surname; the names that most distinguish the Czechia from the rest of the world are Petr, Tomáš and Karel.

Written in Czech.

Population
11M
Official registers
4
Name forms recorded
66K
ABuilt from 4 official registers, 65,627 name forms in our corpus, 8 cited works.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Czechia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Czechia included.

How names work in Czechia

Names in Czechia follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Czechia

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
MVČR — living population register 2017 — 64,976 given names counted over residents.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Jiří592K5
2Jan588K1
3Petr544K2
4Jana530K8
5Marie521K21
6Josef423K9
7Pavel402K6
8Martin377K—
9Tomáš364K4
10Jaroslav346K12
11Eva305K11
12Miroslav296K14
13Hana292K25
14Anna270K15
15Michal247K3
16František246K31
17Lenka238K—
18Kateřina236K23
19Lucie224K—
20Jakub216K13

Where the two lists disagree

15 of MVČR — living population register 2017's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

MVČR — living population register 2017Across all recordsjiří: 1 → 51. jiří5jan: 2 → 12. jan1petr: 3 → 23. petr2jana: 4 → 84. jana8marie: 5 → 21 · ranks lower across all records5. marie21josef: 6 → 96. josef9pavel: 7 → 67. pavel6martin: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. martinnot rankedtomáš: 9 → 4 · ranks higher across all records9. tomáš4jaroslav: 10 → 1210. jaroslav12eva: 11 → 1111. eva11miroslav: 12 → 1412. miroslav14hana: 13 → 25 · ranks lower across all records13. hana25anna: 14 → 1514. anna15michal: 15 → 3 · ranks higher across all records15. michal3františek: 16 → 31 · ranks lower across all records16. františek31lenka: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. lenkanot rankedkateřina: 18 → 23 · ranks lower across all records18. kateřina23lucie: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. lucienot rankedjakub: 20 → 13 · ranks higher across all records20. jakub13milan: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. milannot rankedalena: 22 → 10 · ranks higher across all records22. alena10karel: 23 → 17 · ranks higher across all records23. karel17lukáš: 24 → 16 · ranks higher across all records24. lukáš16petra: 25 → 18 · ranks higher across all records25. petra18
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
MVČR — living population register 2017 on the left; every record we hold for Czechia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Czechia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Czechia holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

JiříPetrTomášKarelJakubJanaPetraVáclavMarieFrantišekMiroslavOndřejJanKateřinaRadekEvaMartinaJaroslavMarekZuzana
Sized by how much of the difference between Czechia's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.(measured from records)

Scripts & spelling

Jangiven name(measured from records)
Petrgiven name(measured from records)
Michalgiven name(measured from records)
Tomášgiven name(measured from records)
Jiřígiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Czechia, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

The Latin alphabet here is not the ASCII one. Stripping diacritics merges names that are not the same name and changes how they are pronounced, and a record that has been ASCII-folded has lost information no amount of guessing recovers.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-10-09.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Czechia?
Jiří, according to MVČR — living population register 2017, with 592,180 bearers recorded.
What is the most common surname in Czechia?
Nováková, according to MVČR — living population register 2017, with 34,759 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Czechia?
Because they count different people. MVČR — living population register 2017 counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Jiří. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jan. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Czechia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/CZ (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from MVČR — living population register 2017.