Golub

surname · Latin script

Meaning: “Golub” in Slavic means pigeon; Jonah = the pigeon

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

/ˈɡoʊɫəb/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Golub is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 2.2K(measured from records)
  • SISlovenia1 in 12K
  • FIFinland1 in 80K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

2,364 people, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
109 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Croatia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

GolubLatin(measured from records)
ГолубCyrillic(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)

“Golub” in Slavic means pigeon; Jonah = the pigeon.

Sources 1

  • The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Golub 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 Golub is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—2,3641 in 141K2.4KGolub109
HR Croatia#1941,9111 in 2.2K1.9KGolub54
PL Poland—3921 in 98K203——
SI Slovenia—1701 in 12K170Golub6
BR Brazil—1061 in 2M106——
CH Switzerland—1021 in 82K102Golub6
FI Finland—701 in 80K70—1

2,364 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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Golub is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Ukrainian surname42 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, United States, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, English

    Also written Голуб, Голубь, Holub, Holúb, Golub'

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Golub'

  • English surname15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Israel, Germany, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, Hebrew, German

    Also written Golob, גולוב, Golov, Goloub, Ğöĺöb

38 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)

Golub 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.

  • 1 . Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic), Ukrainian, and Belorussian: variant of Holub. 2. German: from Sorbian golub ‘dove’, a metonymic occupational name for someone who bred or looked after doves, which were reared for food in the Middle Ages. See also Holub.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Serbo-Croatian, dove, pigeon

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

  • In Serbo-Croatian, columba

    as a wordSkok, Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (1971-74)

  • In Russian, var of Golub'.

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

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)

19201940196019802000Leon Golub, b. 1922Gene Golub, b. 1932Harvey Golub, b. 1939David Golub, b. 1950Jeff Golub, b. 1955Marina Golub, b. 1957Ben Golub, b. 1968Mira Golub, b. 1975Dragutin Golub, b. 1987Diana Golub, b. 1992

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 Golub,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 37 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Golub
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.4K#12,986
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.2K#12,634
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.2K#13,240
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20211.9K#202
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)20211.7K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026203—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—203#16,205
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026189—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—189#17,052
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—170#2,592
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—106#60,636
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024102#10,879

Reference works 6

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 Golub mean, and where does it come from?
“Golub” in Slavic means pigeon; Jonah = the pigeon. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
How do you pronounce Golub?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɡoʊɫəb/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Golub have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 2.4 thousand people named Golub, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled golub.
Where is Golub most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Golub is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Golub?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,364 people named Golub in 2010, about 1 in 141 thousand residents.
How common is Golub compared with other names?
In Croatia, Golub is the 194th most common surname of 72,581 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Golub?

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

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, “Golub” — the 194th most common surname in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Golub parses inside a full name →