Names of Croatia HR

DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) records Horvat as the commonest surname in Croatia; the names that most distinguish Croatia from the rest of the world are Josip, Ivan and Stjepan.

Written in Croatian.

Population
4.2M
Official registers
3
Name forms recorded
44K
ABuilt from 3 official registers (2021), 44,152 name forms in our corpus, 7 cited works.

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

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

How names work in Croatia

Names in Croatia 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 Croatia

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 2

This register publishes counts, not ranks; the numbering is the order of its own figures.

DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021), 2021 — 5,244 given names counted over residents.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Ivan107K2
2Marija94K1
3Ana65K3
4Josip62K4
5Marko46K6
6Ivana46K9
7Luka36K—
8Tomislav34K14
9Stjepan33K5
10Željko33K15
11Ivica31K17
12Ante31K11
13Mario29K21
14Nikola27K8
15Mirjana26K23
16Petar24K12
17Katarina23K16
18Damir23K29
19Vesna22K37
20Nada22K26

Where the two lists disagree

15 of DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) 2021Across all recordsivan: 1 → 21. ivan2marija: 2 → 12. marija1ana: 3 → 33. ana3josip: 4 → 44. josip4marko: 5 → 65. marko6ivana: 6 → 96. ivana9luka: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. lukanot rankedtomislav: 8 → 14 · ranks lower across all records8. tomislav14stjepan: 9 → 59. stjepan5željko: 10 → 15 · ranks lower across all records10. željko15ivica: 11 → 17 · ranks lower across all records11. ivica17ante: 12 → 1112. ante11mario: 13 → 21 · ranks lower across all records13. mario21nikola: 14 → 8 · ranks higher across all records14. nikola8mirjana: 15 → 23 · ranks lower across all records15. mirjana23petar: 16 → 1216. petar12katarina: 17 → 1617. katarina16damir: 18 → 29 · ranks lower across all records18. damir29vesna: 19 → 37 · ranks lower across all records19. vesna37nada: 20 → 26 · ranks lower across all records20. nada26marina: 21 → 39 · ranks lower across all records21. marina39petra: 22 → 58 · ranks lower across all records22. petra58goran: 23 → 36 · ranks lower across all records23. goran36martina: 24 → 46 · ranks lower across all records24. martina46lucija: 25 → 67 · ranks lower across all records25. lucija67
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021), 2021 on the left; every record we hold for Croatia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The census counts residents in 2021, once each, and its commonest given name is Ivan. Our corpus counts records rather than people — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records, several generations of births — and its commonest is Marija, because the older female given-name stock is heavier in the historical layer than in the living population. The same effect moves surnames: Kovačević is the census's second surname and only our ninth, because its spellings scatter across sources (Kovacevic, Kovačevič, Kovacević) and only the dominant spelling carries the rank, while Horvat — short, diacritic-free and stable — holds first place in both. [@dzs-2021]

Characteristic of Croatia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Croatia 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.

JosipIvanStjepanIvanaNikolaFranjoAntePetarTomislavKataŽeljkoAnaIvicaLjubicaDragicaAntunMarioBrankoMirjanaMarijaDragutinMilkaMaraKatarinaKaticaMaricaMirkoAnkaNadaMarijanGoranVesnaMatijaDanicaDamirĐuroJosipaMladenMartinaMijoDarkoSanjaGordanaZlatkoAntonijaSlavkoDavorZoranLucijaSnježanaPetraAnicaBrankaRužicaIvankaNevenkaIvaAndrijaMilicaDragan
Sized by how much of the difference between Croatia'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

Marijagiven name(measured from records)
Ivangiven name(measured from records)
Anagiven name(measured from records)
Josipgiven name(measured from records)
Stjepangiven name(measured from records)
The best-attested names in Croatia, 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.

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. Checked against onomastic literature on 2026-09-04.

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 Croatia?
Ivan, according to DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) (2021), with 106,657 bearers recorded.
What is the most common surname in Croatia?
Horvat, according to DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) (2021), with 19,705 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Croatia?
Because they count different people. DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) (2021) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Ivan. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Marija. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Croatia”, https://mondonomo.ai/names/HR (data snapshot 2026-10-09). Official figures from DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021); DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021).