Jelen

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A surname from the Slavic languages

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

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

Jelen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 557K(measured from records)
  • SISlovenia1 in 1.4K
  • PLPoland1 in 9.2K

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.

Poland (measured from records)

4,155 people, 2026

Sources
171 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Polish (Jeleh), Czech, Slovak (Jelen), Slovenian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname or ornamental name from Slavic jelen ‘stag’. Among Jews this was also widely adopted as a translation of Hirsch.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Jelen is read(measured from records)

Jelen is one spelling over 7 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 4 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.

  • English51%

    A surname from the Slavic languages.

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

  • Czech21%

    deer

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

  • Polish10%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Jelen in Polish.

  • German8.7%

    'deer'; compare modern 'elk'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • Spanish8.2%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Jelen in Spanish.

  • French5.6%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Jelen in French.

  • Hungarian5.6%

    present

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

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Jelen 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 Jelen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PL Poland4,1551 in 9.2K2.1KJelen2
SI Slovenia1,4791 in 1.4K1.5KJelen25
CZ Czechia7611 in 14K764—3
US United States5971 in 557K597Jelen171
SK Slovakia1291 in 42K129—1
HR Croatia1081 in 39K114—1

4,155 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling jeleń. 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021). 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)

Jelen is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Brazil, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Jeleñ, Jelén, Jëlën, Jėlėn, Jeleń

  • Hungarian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, United States

    Also written Jeleń

  • Croatian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Slovenia, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian

    Also written Йелен, Jeleń

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Jeleń

  • Danish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Jeleń, Jelén

41 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)

Jelen is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Polish (Jeleh), Czech, Slovak (Jelen), Slovenian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname or ornamental name from Slavic jelen ‘stag’. Among Jews this was also widely adopted as a translation of Hirsch.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Serbo-Croatian, male deer, buck, stag

    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)

190019201940196019802000Josef Jelen, b. 1914Tone Jelen, b. 1916Frieder Jelen, b. 1943Iztok Jelen, b. 1947Eric Jelen, b. 1965Matjaž Jelen, b. 1966Alen Jelen, b. 1970Igor Jelen, b. 1972Ben Jelen, b. 1979Tonja Jelen, b. 1988

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 Ms Jelen,
InformalHi Jelen,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 40 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Jelen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—1.5K#73
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—764#1,414
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—764#1,829
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—761#1,889
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010597#37,341
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000588#36,045
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020561#41,765
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)2021114—
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)2021108#7,408
SK SlovakiaJÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census)199547—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202626—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—26#76,402

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

Where does the name Jelen come from?
Polish (Jeleh), Czech, Slovak (Jelen), Slovenian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): nickname or ornamental name from Slavic jelen ‘stag’. Among Jews this was also widely adopted as a translation of Hirsch. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Jelen?
A machine transcription gives /ˈdʒɛɫən/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Jelen mean?
In English, A surname from the Slavic languages.
In which country does Jelen have the most bearers?
In Poland, the national register counted about 4.2 thousand people named Jelen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jelen.
Where is Jelen most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jelen is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 1.4 thousand people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Jelen?
In Poland, the national register counted 4,155 people named Jelen in 2026, about 1 in 9.2 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Jelen?

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

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, “Jelen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Jelen parses inside a full name →