Kapitan
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A captain
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkæpɪtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kapitan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 855K(measured from records)
- HRCroatia1 in 28K
- PLPoland1 in 51K
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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 144 (measured from records)
- 1 in 28K (inferred from the name graph)
758 people, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
A captain
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kapitan 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 | 758 | 1 in 51K | 388 | — | 1 |
| US United States | 389 | 1 in 855K | 411 | Kapitan | 144 |
| CZ Czechia | 208 | 1 in 51K | 210 | — | 1 |
| PH Philippines | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 598K | — | Kapitan | 7 |
| HR Croatia | 149 | 1 in 28K | 149 | — | — |
| SK Slovakia | 91 | 1 in 60K | 91 | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 38 | 1 in 55K | 38 | — | — |
758 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)
Kapitan 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.
In Indonesian, captain
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Russian, var of Kapiton.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Azerbaijani, captain, commander, master, skipper, team leader
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)
- George Kapitanb. 1919USComic-book writer
- Bolesław Kapitanb. 1932PLPolish historian
- Katarzyna Anna Kapitanhistorian
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 26 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 411 | #54,177 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 393 | #50,055 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 389 | #53,204 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 388 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 388 | #8,383 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 370 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 370 | #8,970 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 149 | #5,585 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 125 | — |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 38 | #9,204 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 3 | #157,193 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 3 | #22,438 |
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 Kapitan mean, and where does it come from?
- A captain Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kapitan?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkæpɪtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kapitan have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 758 people named Kapitan, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kapitan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kapitan is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 28 thousand people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kapitan?
- In Poland, the national register counted 758 people named Kapitan in 2026, about 1 in 51 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kapitan?
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/kapitanThe 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, “Kapitan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.