Kafka
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: a surname, most notably of Franz Kafka
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kɑfkə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kafka is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Czechia than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 195K(measured from records)
- CZCzechia1 in 6.1K
- ISIceland≈1 in 37K
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.
- Czechia (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 278 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.1K (inferred from the name graph)
1,761 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
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)
Means in Czechoslovak = crow, and common for someone who lived near a shield or a sign of house with a crow designed. In Poland the barman is called Kawka. There exists a version for Kafka as diminutive of Yaaakov/Jacob.
Sources 1
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kafka is read(measured from records)
Kafka is one spelling over 2 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.
- English69%
Franz, Austrian writer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German8.5%
a surname, most notably of Franz Kafka
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
from Slavic 'dohle' (jackdaw)
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kafka 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | 1,761 | 1 in 6.1K | 1.8K | — | 3 |
| US United States | 1,705 | 1 in 195K | 1.8K | Kafka | 278 |
| PL Poland | 559 | 1 in 68K | 282 | — | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 297 | 1 in 713K | 297 | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 134K | — | Kafka | 48 |
| SK Slovakia | 132 | 1 in 41K | 132 | — | 1 |
| HR Croatia | 51 | 1 in 83K | 51 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 37K | listed | — | — |
1,761 people counted by MVČR — living population register 2017. 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 2000; MVČR — living population register 2017; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)
Kafka 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.
Means in Czechoslovak = crow, and common for someone who lived near a shield or a sign of house with a crow designed. In Poland the barman is called Kawka. There exists a version for Kafka as diminutive of Yaaakov/Jacob.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
nickname from kavka ‘jackdaw’, applied as a nickname, ornamental name, or habitational name for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of a jackdaw.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from a pet form of the personal name Jakov (see Jacob).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Hermann Kafkab. 1852CZfather of Franz Kafka (1852–1931)
- Julie Löwyb. 1856CZnot in their usual namemother of Franz Kafka
- Bohumil Kafkab. 1878CZCzech sculptor and university educator (1878–1942)
- Franz Kafkab. 1883CZBohemian writer from Prague (1883–1924)
- Gustav Kafkab. 1883ATAustrian academic (1883–1953)
- Elli Kafkab. 1889CZthe oldest sister of Franz Kafka
- Valli Kafkab. 1890CZSister of Franz Kafka (1890–1942)
- Ottla Kafkab. 1892CZsister of Franz Kafka
- Pavel Kafkab. 1896CZholocaust victim, b. 1896-08-13
- Heather Kafkab. 1972USAmerican actress
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 30 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1.8K | #700 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 1.8K | #702 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 1.8K | #701 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.8K | #15,369 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.7K | #16,190 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #16,761 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 297 | #26,631 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 282 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 282 | #11,820 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 277 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 277 | #11,783 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 132 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Kafka come from?
- Means in Czechoslovak = crow, and common for someone who lived near a shield or a sign of house with a crow designed. In Poland the barman is called Kawka. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
- What are other forms of the name Kafka?
- In the etymology graph, Kawka is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Kafka?
- A machine transcription gives /kɑfkə/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Kafka mean?
- In German, a surname, most notably of Franz Kafka
- In which country does Kafka have the most bearers?
- In Czechia, the national register counted about 1.8 thousand people named Kafka, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kafka most common?
- Kafka is densest in Czechia, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.1 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kafka?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 1,761 people named Kafka, about 1 in 6.1 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kafka?
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/kafkaThe 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, “Kafka”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.