Finke
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German surname; plate shows apocope, i.e
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 18 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
Finke is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 1.3M(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 696Kas Pinka
- PLPoland1 in 13Mas Pinka
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 Finke 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 11 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3M (inferred from the name graph)
13 people
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled פינקה in IL Israel.
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)German surname; plate shows apocope, i.e. loss of final -e. Variant pair Finke/Fink is cited.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Finke 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 13 | 1 in 1.3M | 462 | — | 2 |
| FI Finland | 8as Pinka | 1 in 696K | 37 | — | — |
| IL Israel | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | listed | פינקה | 7 |
| PL Poland | 3as Pinka | 1 in 13M | 104 | — | 2 |
| US United States | — | — | 3.4K | Finke | 11 |
13 people counted by Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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 2000; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)Finke is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Zu mhd./mnd. vinke 'Fink'; Übername oder indirekter Berufsname für den Vogelfänger. Die Karte zeigt i/y-Wechsel im Stamm. 5621 Bearer.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Zu Fink; zeigt die -e-Erweiterung bzw. Apokope-/Antritt-Variation im Vokalismus der Namensformen. 5621 Bearer.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Apokope; plate shows vowel loss in Finke ~ Fink/Finken.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In Norwegian Bokmål, a bird of the family Fringillidae, the finches
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)- Leonhard Ludwig Finkeb. 1747DEGerman physician (1747-1837)
- Heinrich Finkeb. 1855DEGerman historian (1855–1938)
- Hermann Finkeb. 1877DEGerman librarian and archaeologist (1877-1947)
- Julius Finkeb. 1880DEGerman politician (1880-1947)
- Fidelio F. Finkeb. 1891DECzech composer
- August Finkeb. 1906DEGerman politician (1906-1995)
- Volker Finkeb. 1948DEGerman association football player and manager
- Nikki Finkeb. 1953USAmerican journalist
- Michael Finkeb. 1996USAmerican basketball player (born 1996)
- Robert Finkeb. 1999USAmerican swimmer
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)Evidence
(measured from records)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.4K | #8,811 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.4K | #9,578 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.3K | #9,442 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 462 | #4,233 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 104 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 104 | #28,981 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 89 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 89 | #32,405 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 37 | #29,306 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Finke come from?
- German surname; plate shows apocope, i.e. loss of final -e. Variant pair Finke/Fink is cited. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus.
- What does the name Finke mean?
- Recorded meaning: German surname; plate shows apocope, i.e.
- In which country does Finke have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 13 people named Finke, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Finke most common?
- Finke is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 1.3 million people carrying it.
- How common is the name Finke?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 13 people named Finke, about 1 in 1.3 million residents.
What do you want to know about Finke?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/finkeThe 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, “Finke”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.