Frank
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from the Norman male personal name Franc, literally ‘member of the Frankish people’, or ‘person from Franconia’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹæŋk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Frank is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Germany it is the 11th most common given name.
- DEGermany≈1 in 142(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 273
- CACanada≈1 in 421
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #140 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 638 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 142 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,000,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from the Norman male personal name Franc, literally ‘member of the Frankish people’, or ‘person from Franconia’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Frank is read(measured from records)
Frank is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English73%
from the Norman male personal name Franc, literally ‘member of the Frankish people’, or ‘person from Franconia’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from the personal name Franco, Francus, or from OFr franc 'free'; first attested Franco, Francus 1086 Domesday Book (Somerset, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Surrey)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- German10%
Toponymic surname: 'the one from Franken' / from a place or region named Franken; variant attestations on the page include many spellings, but no bearer count is given.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Toponymic surname from a place name/region/dwelling name ‘Frank’; bearer count 27,155.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
from the ethnic name of the Franks; also linked with meanings 'free' and 'bold'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
German surname spelling variant showing nk after Fra-; 81,771 tokens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
- Spanish5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Frank in Spanish.
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)
Frank 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈3,000,000 est. | ≈1 in 468 | — | Frank | 110 |
| DE Germany | #11 | ≈560,000 est. | ≈1 in 142 | — | Frank | 344 |
| US United States | #64 | 407,086 | 1 in 817 | 406K | Frank | 638 |
| NG Nigeria | #341 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Frank | 135 |
| GB United Kingdom | #98 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 518 | 17 | Frank | 344 |
| CA Canada | #58 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 421 | 6 | Frank | 327 |
| NL Netherlands | #14 | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 273 | 128 | Frank | 193 |
| NZ New Zealand | #71 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 428 | — | Frank | 135 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- L. Frank Baumb. 1856USAmerican author of children's books (1856–1919)
- Buster Keatonb. 1895USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, comedian, and director (1895–1966)
- C. F. Powellb. 1903GBnot in their usual nameBritish physicist
- Willard Libbyb. 1908USnot in their usual nameAmerican physical chemist
- Frank Gehryb. 1929USCanadian and American architect (1929–2025)
- Frank Zappab. 1940USAmerican musician (1940–1993)
- Frank Ozb. 1944USBritish and American director, actor, and puppeteer
- Frank Wilczekb. 1951USAmerican theoretical physicist
- Don Cheadleb. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor (born 1964)
- Gareth Baleb. 1989GBnot in their usual nameWelsh association football player
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 148 sources across 72 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 406K | #115 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 624 | #115 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 584 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 37 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 6 | #691 |
Reference works 9
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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
- What does the name Frank mean, and where does it come from?
- from the Norman male personal name Franc, literally ‘member of the Frankish people’, or ‘person from Franconia’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Frank?
- In the etymology graph, Francisco, Francesco and Franck are forms of the same name in other languages; Frankie is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is Frank a male or female name?
- Frank 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.
- In which country does Frank have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.0 million people named Frank in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled frank.
- How common is the name Frank?
- In the United States, the national register counted 407,086 people named Frank in 2020, about 1 in 817 residents.
- How common is Frank compared with other names?
- In Germany, Frank is the 11th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Frank?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹæŋk/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Frank?
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/frankThe 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, “Frank” — the 11th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.