Kanarek
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Polish kanarek ‘canary’, hence a nickname for someone thought to resemble the bird in some way, for example with cheerful singing, or, among Jews, an ornamental name
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkænɝɪk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kanarek is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 37K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 761K
- BEBelgium1 in 1.2M
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)
- Sources
- 22 (measured from records)
- 1 in 37K (inferred from the name graph)
1,022 people, 2026
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Polish kanarek ‘canary’, hence a nickname for someone thought to resemble the bird in some way, for example with cheerful singing, or, among Jews, an ornamental name.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kanarek 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | 1,022 | 1 in 37K | 526 | — | — |
| US United States | 437 | 1 in 761K | 525 | Kanarek | 22 |
| BR Brazil | 167 | 1 in 1.3M | 167 | — | — |
| BE Belgium | 10 | 1 in 1.2M | 10 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | 2 | 1 in 5.4M | 2 | Kanarek | 6 |
1,022 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026. 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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)
Kanarek 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 Polish, Atlantic canary (Serinus canaria)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In wym, canary (bird)
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)
- Perl Taube Flickb. 1860CZnot in their usual nameHolocaust victim (born 1860)
- Amalie Bierb. 1885not in their usual nameHolocaust victim (born 1885)
- Eliasz Kanarekb. 1902PLPolish painter (1902-1969)
- Irving Kanarekb. 1920USAmerican lawyer
- Marcel Kanarekb. 1993PLPolish chess 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)
Attested in 14 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 526 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 526 | #6,058 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 525 | #44,135 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 496 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 496 | #6,571 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 437 | #48,347 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 355 | #54,385 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 167 | #42,527 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 10 | #71,119 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 2 | #195,289 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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)
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 Kanarek mean, and where does it come from?
- from Polish kanarek ‘canary’, hence a nickname for someone thought to resemble the bird in some way, for example with cheerful singing, or, among Jews, an ornamental name. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kanarek?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkænɝɪk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kanarek have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 1.0 thousand people named Kanarek, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kanarek most common?
- Kanarek is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 37 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kanarek?
- In Poland, the national register counted 1,022 people named Kanarek in 2026, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kanarek?
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/kanarekThe 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, “Kanarek”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.