Kalman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) from the Yiddish male personal name Kalmen, ultimately from Hebrew Kalonimos, based on a Greek phrase meaning ‘beautiful name’; (ii) from Hungarian Kalman, literally ‘remainder’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkæɫmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kalman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- HUHungary≈1 in 8K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 85K
- RORomania≈1 in 6.3K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 150 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
3,927 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- HebrewKalonimos(measured from records)
- HungarianKalman(measured from records)
(i) from the Yiddish male personal name Kalmen, ultimately from Hebrew Kalonimos, based on a Greek phrase meaning ‘beautiful name’; (ii) from Hungarian Kalman, literally ‘remainder’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kalman 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 3,927 | 1 in 85K | 3.9K | Kalman | 150 |
| RO Romania | — | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | — | Kalman | 30 |
| HU Hungary | #195 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 8K | 13K | Kalman | 113 |
| PL Poland | — | 555 | 1 in 69K | 290 | Kalman | 28 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 110K | 1 | Kalman | 27 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Kalman | 17 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 5 | — | — |
3,927 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Nyilvántartó — Top-100 given names in population (2020–2025); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Kalman is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from the Yiddish personal name Kalmen, an everyday form of Kloynemes (from Hebrew Kalonimos, which is from Greek kalos ‘lovely’ or kallos ‘beauty’ + onyma ‘name’). This Hebrew name is &st recorded in the Talmud and has been used continuously since then. Among Hungarian Jews, it was sometimes confused with 1 above.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
name Kalmen, the everyday form of the Yid. male given name Kloynemes (from Hebr. Kalonimos, which is from Gk kalos fair, lovely, or hallos beauty, loveliness (see Kalinin) + onyma name). The Hebr. given name is first recorded in the Talmud and has been used continuously since then.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, lang., people, Russia
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Kalmuk [Kalmyk]
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, männl. Vom. ungarischer Herkunft, bekannt vor allem durch den ungarischen
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Max Kalmanb. 1884USAmerican architect
- Maxwell Kalmanb. 1906CACanadian architect
- Thomas Kalmanb. 1917USAmerican politician (1917–2012)
- Maira Kalmanb. 1949USIsraeli American artist and creator of children's books (born 1949)
- Tibor Kalmanb. 1949HUAmerican graphic designer (1949–1999)
- Haim Kalmanb. 1956ILORCID 0000-0001-7875-5161
- Yana Kalmanb. 1974ILIsraeli model and nurse
- Lauren Kalmanb. 1980USAmerican visual artist, art teacher (born 1980)
- Ed Kalmanb. 1982GBrugby player
- Debra KalmanUSAmerican 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 55 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,415 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.3K | #12,311 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2K | #14,366 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 290 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 290 | #11,492 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 265 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 265 | #12,326 |
| IS Iceland | Ættarnöfn á Íslandi — register of Icelandic hereditary family names | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name 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
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 Kalman mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) from the Yiddish male personal name Kalmen, ultimately from Hebrew Kalonimos, based on a Greek phrase meaning ‘beautiful name’; (ii) from Hungarian Kalman, literally ‘remainder’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Kalman?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkæɫmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kalman have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.9 thousand people named Kalman, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kalman.
- How common is the name Kalman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,927 people named Kalman in 2010, about 1 in 85 thousand residents.
- How common is Kalman compared with other names?
- In Hungary, Kalman is the 195th most common surname of 88,284 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kalman?
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/kalmanThe 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, “Kalman” — the 195th most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.