Names of Estonia EE
Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register) records Tamm as the commonest surname in Estonia; the names that most distinguish Estonia from the rest of the world are Toomas, Margus and Andres.
Written in Estonian, Russian.
- Population
- 1.2M
- Official registers
- 3
- Name forms recorded
- 22K
Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.
How names work in Estonia
6 naming traditions are in use in Estonia, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.
The most common names in Estonia
This register publishes counts, not ranks; the numbering is the order of its own figures.
Where the two lists disagree
25 of Siseministeerium — newborn names's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.
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 Estonia
Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Estonia 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.
Scripts & spelling
Names in Estonia are written in Latin (81%) and Cyrillic (19%), measured over the spellings our corpus records for this country.
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
- Siseministeerium — newborn names2025headline (given)
Ministry of the Interior (Siseministeerium), Estonia counts newborns: 61 given-name forms for 2021–2025. Last verified 2026-06-05.
- Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register)2025headline (surnames)
Statistics Estonia (Statistikaamet) counts residents: 202 given-name and surname forms for 2021–2025, licence Open data Estonia. Last verified 2026-05-10.
Statistics Estonia (Statistikaamet) counts residents: 8,548 given-name and surname forms, licence Open data Estonia. Last verified 2026-06-03.
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.
- How Russian Names Workpaper
- Circassiansencyclopaedia
- A primer on Chechen namesweb
- Behind the Namenamesite
- Chechen languageencyclopaedia
- Chechen Namesnamesite
- Chechensencyclopaedia
- Circassian diasporaencyclopaedia
- Circassian Names (Jaimoukha, oocities)web
- Circassiansencyclopaedia
- Circassians: Kinshipweb
- Crafting Identity: Surnames in the Turkish Republicweb
- Double Surnames Among Circassians in Homeland and Diaspora (Ionov 2024, Voprosy Onomastiki / Avesis)web
- Eastern Slavic naming customsencyclopaedia
- How Russian Patronymics Workweb
- Ingush peopleencyclopaedia
- Ingush submitted surnamesnamesite
- Kabardiansencyclopaedia
- Nakh languagesencyclopaedia
- Quora: Russified -ov/-ova names in the Caucasusweb
- Russian given nameencyclopaedia
- Russian surnameencyclopaedia
- Russification of Central Asian namesweb
- Slavic name suffixesencyclopaedia
- South Ossetia Adopts Law On Surnamesweb
- Surname Law (Turkey)encyclopaedia
- Teipencyclopaedia
- The de-Russification of surnames in Central Asiaweb
- Tribal Unions and Clansweb
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 Estonia?
- Mark, according to Siseministeerium — newborn names (2025), with 73 bearers recorded among boys.
- What is the most common surname in Estonia?
- Tamm, according to Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register), with 2,715 bearers recorded among girls.
- Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Estonia?
- Because they count different people. Siseministeerium — newborn names (2025) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Mark. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Игорь. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
- Is there one naming system in Estonia?
- No — 6 are described on this page (Estonian, Russian, Ossetian, Uzbek and Russian, Chechen and Caucasian, Circassian), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.
Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Estonia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/EE (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from Siseministeerium — newborn names; Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register).