Kalashnikov
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Russian-designed automatic rifle
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 9 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/kɐˈɫaʂnʲɪkəf/(recorded in a dictionary) Russian · from Wiktionary · read from калашников
Kalashnikov is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country.
- UZUzbekistan≈1 in 23Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- KGKyrgyzstan≈1 in 28Kfew records
- EEEstonia≈1 in 47Kfew records
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 Kalashnikov 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.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 164 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
≈34,000 named Калашников, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uzbekistan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)3 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Калашников in RU Russia, KG Kyrgyzstan, BY Belarus and 1 more and Калашніков in UA Ukraine.
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)Russian-designed automatic rifle
Cited for this meaning 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kalashnikov is found
(measured from records)Kalashnikov 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #400 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Калашников | 164 |
| UA Ukraine | #958 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Калашніков | 42 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Калашников | 7 |
| BY Belarus | — | ≈860 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Калашников | 19 |
| KG Kyrgyzstan | — | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Калашников | 14 |
| PL Poland | — | 238 | 1 in 161K | 238 | Kalashnikov | 12 |
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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)Kalashnikov 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.
In English, A particular model of Russian assault rifle.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, a Kalashnikov assault rifle
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)- Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikovb. 1919RUSoviet and Russian small arms designer (1919–2013)
- Victor Kalashnikovb. 1942RURussian firearm designer (1942–2018)
- Oksana Kalashnikovab. 1990GEnot in their usual nameGeorgian female tennis player
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 9 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kalashnikov mean, and where does it come from?
- Russian-designed automatic rifle Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- How do you pronounce Kalashnikov?
- In Russian /kɐˈɫaʂnʲɪkəf/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kalashnikov?
- Mondonomo estimates about 34 thousand people named Калашников in Russia, more than in any other country we hold. After it come Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kalashnikov?
- In Poland, the national register counted 238 people named Kalashnikov in 2026, about 1 in 161 thousand residents.
- How common is Kalashnikov compared with other names?
- In Russia, Kalashnikov is the 400th most common surname of 1,952,411 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kalashnikov?
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/kalashnikovThe 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, “Kalashnikov” — the 400th most common surname in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.