Balodis

surname · Latin script

Meaning: pigeon, dove (various birds of the family Columbidae, especially Columba livia) (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 7 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Balodis is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 132 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Balodis is also written Балодис in Cyrillic.

  • NONorway1 in 119K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 283K
  • DKDenmark1 in 734K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Balodis itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

132 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
63 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 119K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Balodis in other scripts: Cyrillic

(measured from records)
BalodisLatin(measured from records)
БалодисBalodis in Cyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Балодис in RU Russia.

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)

pigeon, dove (various birds of the family Columbidae, especially Columba livia)

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Balodis is found

(measured from records)

Balodis 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 Balodis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States1321 in 2.5M142—1
RU Russia≈100 est.≈1 in 1.4M—Балодис63
NO Norway461 in 119K46——
SE Sweden361 in 283K36—1
PL Poland151 in 2.6M13——
DK Denmark81 in 734K8——

132 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 recorded senses

(measured from records)

Balodis 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 Latvian, debess dienvidu puslodes zvaigznājs (latīņu "Columba", saīsinājums "Col") Lielā Suņa tuvumā; spožu zvaigžņu nav, Latvijā nav novērojams

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, putnu klases baložveidīgo kārtas dzimta ("Columbidae"), 42 ģintis, 303 sugas, Latvijā konstatētas 2 ģintis, 5 sugas

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, šīs dzimtas ģints ("Columba"), 51 suga, Latvijā ligzdo 3 sugas

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, zilais putns, netīrības iemiesojums

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

  • In Latvian, Bērns; mīļš cilvēks

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)
1850190019502000Kārlis Balodis, b. 1864Jānis Balodis, b. 1881Daniels Balodis, b. 1998
  • Kārlis Balodisb. 1864LVEconomist and Member of the Parliament of Latvia (1864-1931)
  • Jānis Balodisb. 1881LVLatvian military personnel and politician (1881-1965)
  • Daniels Balodisb. 1998LVLatvian association football player (born 1998)

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).

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalDear Balodis,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

15 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 7 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Balodis mean, and where does it come from?
pigeon, dove (various birds of the family Columbidae, especially Columba livia) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Balodis?
In the United States, the national register counted about 132 people named Balodis, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Russia, Norway, Sweden and Poland; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Balodis most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Balodis is densest in Norway — about 1 in 119 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Balodis?
In the United States, the national register counted 132 people named Balodis in 2010, about 1 in 2.5 million residents.

What do you want to know about Balodis?

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

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, “Balodis” — ranked 114166th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Balodis parses inside a full name →