Gwak
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡwɑk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gwak is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Korea than in any other country, where it is the 32nd most common surname.
- KRSouth Korea1 in 255as 곽(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 13Kas Quick
- MOMacao≈1 in 930as 곽
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 Gwak 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.
- South Korea (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 320 (measured from records)
- 1 in 255 (inferred from the name graph)
203,365 named 곽, 2015
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Korea, as 곽
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kwak in US United States, NL Netherlands, CN China and 2 more and 곽 in KR South Korea, MO Macao.
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gwak 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR South Korea | #32 | 203,365as 곽 | 1 in 255 | 210K | 곽 | 191 |
| US United States | — | 25,091as Quick | 1 in 13K | 25K | Kwak | 320 |
| KP North Korea | #178 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 1 | Kwak | 30 |
| CN China | — | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Kwak | 16 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Kwak | 2 |
| MO Macao | #101 | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 930 | — | 곽 | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 628as Kwak | 1 in 28K | 628 | Kwak | 32 |
203,365 people counted by KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants, 2015. 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: KOSIS 2015 Census — surname population with hanja variants; KOSIS — 2015 census surnames; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
- Kwak Jae-yongb. 1959KRSouth Korean film director
- Kwak Sin-aeb. 1968KRSouth Korean film producer
- Kwak Do-wonb. 1974KRSouth Korean actor
- Ji Seongb. 1977KRnot in their usual nameSouth Korean actor
- Kwak Tae-hwib. 1981KRSouth Korean association football player
- Kwak Ji-minb. 1985KRSouth Korean actress
- Kwak Si-yangb. 1987KRSouth Korean actor
- Kwak Hee-sungb. 1990KRSouth Korean actor
- Gwak Dong-hanb. 1992KRSouth Korean judoka
- Kwak Dong-yeonb. 1997KRSouth Korean actor and singer
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)
Attested in 7 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 182 | #104,723 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 129 | #131,379 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- How do you pronounce Gwak?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡwɑk/ (IPA) for Korean.
- In which country does Gwak have the most bearers?
- In South Korea, the national register counted about 203 thousand people named 곽, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Gwak most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Gwak itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is South Korea's: the national register counts about 1 in 255 people named 곽.
- How common is the name Gwak?
- In South Korea, the national register counted 203,365 people named 곽 in 2015, about 1 in 255 residents.
- How common is Gwak compared with other names?
- In South Korea, Gwak is the 32nd most common surname of 14,133 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gwak?
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/gwakThe 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, “Gwak” — the 32nd most common surname in South Korea. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.