Boris

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Slavic name, possibly from Turkic meaning 'wolf'

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

Boris is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 2.8K(inferred from the name graph)
  • RURussia≈1 in 10K
  • USUnited States1 in 22K

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 Boris itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈28,000 people, est.

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
403 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 280 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BorisLatin(measured from records)
ԲորիսArmenian(measured from records)
ბორისGeorgian(measured from records)
БорисCyrillic(measured from records)
ΜποριςGreek(measured from records)

One other spelling is 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)

Slavic name, often linked to Turkic or Old Slavic roots; meaning uncertain.

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

How Boris is read(measured from records)

Boris is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English23%

    Slavic name, possibly from Turkic meaning 'wolf'

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

    A male given name from the Slavic languages.

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

  • Spanish16%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Boris in Spanish.

  • Russian13%

    "glorious fight." Short form var of Borislav.

    as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)

  • French11%

    Slavic name, often linked to Turkic or Old Slavic roots; meaning uncertain.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Nom slave, d'origine incertaine; saint Boris vénéré en Orient.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • German8.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Boris in German.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Boris 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 Boris is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#422≈28,000 est.≈1 in 2.8K—Boris247
US United States—14,9241 in 22K15KBoris403
FR France—≈14,000 est.≈1 in 4.8K16KBoris8
RU Russia—≈14,000 est.≈1 in 10K#23Boris101
HR Croatia—13,2691 in 31913K—4
BG Bulgaria—≈13,000 est.≈1 in 527628—5
MD Moldova#3279,8891 in 3409.9KBoris21
SI Slovenia—7,5201 in 2807.5K—36
MK North Macedonia—3,869as Борис1 in 5493.9K—8

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); e-services.md — living population register; SURS — resident population given names; State Statistical Office — living population names; NSI — newborn names (press release). 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)

Boris is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian given name87 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Croatian

    Also written Борис, Borys, Боря, Боріс, Борисс

  • Slovak given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Slovakia, Czechia, United States, Russia

    Languages: Slovak, Czech

    Also written Boriš, Borįs, Böřïš, Bóris, Boriş

  • Hungarian given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Russia, Hungary, Estonia

    Languages: Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Börîs, Bõrïs, Böris

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Bóris, Borís, Boris͏, Bôrîs

  • Indonesian given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Russia, Peru

    Also written Boriş

95 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)

Boris is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Probably from a Tartar nickname meaning ‘small’. Saints Boris and Gleb were sons of Prince Vladimir, first Christian ruler of Kiev in the roth century. D

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

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)

1850190019502000Andrei Bely, b. 1880Boris Pasternak, b. 1890Boris Yeltsin, b. 1931Boris Spassky, b. 1937Boris Perchatkin, b. 1946Boris Trajkovski, b. 1956Boris Tadić, b. 1958Boris Johnson, b. 1964Boris Becker, b. 1967Boris Kodjoe, b. 1973

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 123 sources across 61 countries.

Official registers attesting Boris
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)202416K#1,815
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202015K#1,902
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)202113K#79
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)202111K—
MD Moldovae-services.md — living population register—9.9K#103
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names20257.5K#31
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—7.4K#57
BG BulgariaNSI — newborn names (press release)2018628#4
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202072#1,902
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202537—

Reference works 9

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

Where does the name Boris come from?
Slavic name, often linked to Turkic or Old Slavic roots; meaning uncertain. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
In which country does Boris have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 28 thousand people named Boris in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boris.
Where is Boris most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Boris is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 280 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Boris?
In the United States, the national register counted 14,924 people named Boris in 2020, about 1 in 22 thousand residents.
How common is Boris compared with other names?
In Germany, Boris is the 422nd most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
Is Boris a male or female name?
Boris is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Boris?
In the etymology graph, Borys and Borisu are forms of the same name in other languages; Borut and Borya are recorded short or pet forms.
What does the name Boris mean?
In English, Slavic name, possibly from Turkic meaning 'wolf'

What do you want to know about Boris?

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

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, “Boris” — the 422nd most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Boris parses inside a full name →