Knez

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Croatian: prince

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/knêːz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Knez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Slovenia than in any other country, where it is the 43rd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 3.1K(measured from records)
  • SISlovenia1 in 976
  • RSSerbia≈1 in 59K

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.

Slovenia (measured from records)

2,154 people

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
69 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 976 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

KnezLatin(measured from records)
КнезCyrillic(measured from records)

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)

from knez ‘prince’, ‘lord’, ‘chief’, a status name for a dignitary, applied also to the headman of a village. As a surname it may also be an ironic or figurative nickname.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Knez is read(measured from records)

Knez is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Croatian41%

    prince

    as a wordrecorded as Serbo-Croatiankaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English35%

    A duke or prince in medieval Slavic countries.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish7.1%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Knez in Spanish.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Knez 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.

Where Knez is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SI Slovenia#432,1541 in 9762.2KKnez47
HR Croatia#3591,3601 in 3.1K1.4KKnez69
US United States—3531 in 942K387Knez48
PL Poland—2351 in 163K125——
RS Serbia—≈120 est.≈1 in 59K—Knez12
PY Paraguay—≈30 est.≈1 in 238K—Knez1

2,154 people counted by stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Knez is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Australia, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Kněz

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Bolivia, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Kñez

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Kneź

  • Czech surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia

    Also written Kněz, Kněž, Knež

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Knež, Kněz

32 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Knez 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.

  • from knez ‘prince’, ‘lord’, ‘chief’, a status name for a dignitary, applied also to the headman of a village. As a surname it may also be an ironic or figurative nickname.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In German, from Slavic knjaz ‘prince, lord’; knez ‘priest’

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In Turkish, A prince in medieval Slavic countries.

    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)

19201940196019802000Tone Knez, b. 1930Tomislav Knez, b. 1938Rudi Knez, b. 1944Franc Knez, b. 1955Dejan Knez, b. 1961Darko Knez, b. 1966Nataša Knez, b. 1970Mihaela Knez, b. 1972Daria Knez, b. 1977Tadej Žagar-Knez, b. 1991

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Knez
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—2.2K#33
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20211.4K#346
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)20211.3K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020387#56,914
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000363#53,420
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010353#57,639
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026125—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—125#24,595
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026110—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—110#27,729
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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

Where does the name Knez come from?
from knez ‘prince’, ‘lord’, ‘chief’, a status name for a dignitary, applied also to the headman of a village. As a surname it may also be an ironic or figurative nickname. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Knez?
A machine transcription gives /knêːz/ (IPA) for Croatian.
What does the name Knez mean?
In Croatian, prince
In which country does Knez have the most bearers?
In Slovenia, the national register counted about 2.2 thousand people named Knez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled knez.
Where is Knez most common?
Knez is densest in Slovenia, where the national register counts about 1 in 976 people carrying it.
How common is the name Knez?
In Slovenia, the national register counted 2,154 people named Knez, about 1 in 976 residents.
How common is Knez compared with other names?
In Slovenia, Knez is the 43rd most common surname of 13,062 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Knez?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/knez

The 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, “Knez” — the 43rd most common surname in Slovenia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Knez parses inside a full name →