Kawka
surname · Latin script
Meaning: jackdaw (corvid of the genus Coloeus)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 13 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈkaf.ka/(recorded in a dictionary) Polish · from Wiktionary
Kawka is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 6.3K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 137K
- CZCzechia1 in 446K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Poland (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 84 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
6,076 people, 2026
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)jackdaw (corvid of the genus Coloeus)
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 26 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kawka 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 | #862 | 6,076 | 1 in 6.3K | 3.1K | Kawka | 84 |
| US United States | — | 224 | 1 in 1.5M | 226 | Kawka | 49 |
| BR Brazil | — | 220 | 1 in 962K | 220 | — | 1 |
| FR France | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 555K | 26 | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 1.4M | — | Kawka | 37 |
| NO Norway | — | 40 | 1 in 137K | 40 | — | 3 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 214K | — | Kawka | 7 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 24 | 1 in 446K | 24 | — | 3 |
6,076 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 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); 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)Kawka 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 dsb, jackdaw (Coloeus monedula)
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)- Tadeusz Kawkab. 1929PLPolish geographer
- Bernard Kawkab. 1943PLPolish composer
- Irena Stawowy-Kawkab. 1951PLPolish historian
- Beata Kawkab. 1967PLPolish actress
- Inga Kawkab. 1976Polish legal scholar
- Adéla Kawkab. 1977CZCzech astronomist
- Wiktor Kawkab. 1996PLPolish handball player
- Joanna KawkaPLDr. rer. nat. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2014
- Justyna KawkaPLPolish pharmaceutical scientist
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)23 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3.1K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3.1K | #786 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3K | #788 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 226 | #78,549 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 224 | #83,834 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 220 | #33,992 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 206 | #95,069 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 40 | #29,673 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 29 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 26 | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 24 | #47,892 |
Reference works 6
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Kawka mean, and where does it come from?
- jackdaw (corvid of the genus Coloeus) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Kawka?
- In the etymology graph, Kafka is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Kawka?
- In Polish /ˈkaf.ka/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Kawka have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 6.1 thousand people named Kawka, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kawka.
- Where is Kawka most common?
- Kawka is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.3 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kawka?
- In Poland, the national register counted 6,076 people named Kawka in 2026, about 1 in 6.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Kawka compared with other names?
- In Poland, Kawka is the 862nd most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kawka?
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/kawkaThe 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, “Kawka” — the 862nd most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.