Katona
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Katona is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: occupational name from katona ‘soldier’ (from Byzantine Greek fcaloMnn ‘tent’, ‘camp’).
- HRCroatia1 in 44K(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 66K
- CZCzechia1 in 118K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 95 (measured from records)
- 1 in 44K (inferred from the name graph)
1,456 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
occupational name from katona ‘soldier’ (from Byzantine Greek fcaloMnn ‘tent’, ‘camp’).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Katona 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 | 1,456 | 1 in 228K | 1.5K | Katona | 20 |
| HR Croatia | 97 | 1 in 44K | 97 | — | — |
| CZ Czechia | 91 | 1 in 118K | 91 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 77 | 1 in 133K | 77 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 62 | 1 in 136K | 62 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | 45 | 1 in 124K | 45 | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 32 | 1 in 66K | 32 | — | — |
1,456 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); MVČR — living population register 2017; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)
Katona is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Hungarian, soldier
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)
- József Katonab. 1791HUHungarian writer (1791-1830)
- András Katonab. 1938HUHungarian water polo player
- Gyula O. H. Katonab. 1941HUHungarian mathematician
- Sándor Katonab. 1943HUassociation footballer (1943-2009)
- Béla Katonab. 1944HUHungarian politician
- Jacqui Katonab. 1966AUAustralian activist
- Kerry Katonab. 1980GBEnglish media personality and singer (born 1980)
- Renáta Katonab. 1994HUHungarian fencer
- Máté Katonab. 1997HUHungarian footballer (born 1997)
- Mátyás Katonab. 1999HUHungarian footballer (born 1999)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 34 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.5K | #17,268 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.5K | #18,808 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.5K | #18,763 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 97 | #8,124 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 91 | #18,255 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 90 | #8,094 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 77 | #8,871 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 70 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 62 | #15,845 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 45 | #24,916 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 32 | #10,294 |
| 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
- 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
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 Katona mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name from katona ‘soldier’ (from Byzantine Greek fcaloMnn ‘tent’, ‘camp’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Katona have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Katona, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled katona.
- Where is Katona most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Katona is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 44 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Katona?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,456 people named Katona in 2010, about 1 in 228 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Katona?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/katonaThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Katona”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.