Holk
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A hollow cavity
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/hoʊɫk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Holk is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 1.5M(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 26K
- PLPoland1 in 205K
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.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- Sources
- 139 (measured from records)
- 1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
228 people
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A hollow cavity.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Holk is read(measured from records)
Holk 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.
- English65%
A hollow cavity.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Danish12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Holk in Danish.
- German7.5%
männl. Vom., friesische Koseform von älteren Namen, die mit »Hold-« bzw. »Huld-« (ahd. hold »gnädig, günstig; dienstbar; treu«) gebildet wurden.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Holk 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.
228 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). 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)
Holk is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, hollow object; socket (like the shaft socket on a speartip)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, a hamlet in Nijkerk, Gelderland, Netherlands
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gml, hulk (large cargo ship)
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)
- Adolf Holkb. 1873CZCzech translator
- Lambertus Jacobus van Holkb. 1893NLDutch university teacher
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 15 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 265 | #77,921 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 262 | #69,854 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 228 | #2,173 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 216 | #86,314 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 95 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 95 | #31,148 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 92 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 92 | #31,596 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 33 | #17,495 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
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 Holk mean, and where does it come from?
- A hollow cavity. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Holk?
- A machine transcription gives /hoʊɫk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Holk have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 228 people named Holk, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled holk.
- Where is Holk most common?
- Holk is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 26 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Holk?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 228 people named Holk, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Holk?
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/holkThe 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, “Holk”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.