Koker
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A sluice
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkoʊkɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Koker is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 9.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 628K
- SLSierra Leone≈1 in 5.6K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 155 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Sierra Leone, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
1. from Middle Dutch coker ‘case’, ‘sheath’, ‘cover’, perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such articles or for a messenger or official who carried letters or documents in a case. 2. occupational name for a cook, from an agent derivative of coken ‘to cook’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Koker is read(measured from records)
Koker is one spelling over 2 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.
- English67%
A sluice.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Dutch6.2%
1. from Middle Dutch coker ‘case’, ‘sheath’, ‘cover’, perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such articles or for a messenger or official who carried letters or documents in a case. 2. occupational name for a cook, from an agent derivative of coken ‘to cook’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
tube, cylinder, cylindrical case, quiver
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Koker 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 9.5K | — | Koker | 47 |
| SL Sierra Leone | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 5.6K | 1 | — | 7 |
| US United States | 530 | 1 in 628K | 604 | Koker | 155 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 658K | — | Koker | 11 |
| IN India | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 6.2M | — | Koker | 2 |
| AU Australia | ≈52 est. | ≈1 in 486K | — | Koker | 35 |
| CH Switzerland | 25 | 1 in 336K | 25 | — | 1 |
| SG Singapore | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 312K | — | Koker | 2 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates. 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)
Koker 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 Western Frisian, quiver (tube for holding arrows)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Bokmål, present of koke
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)
- Baltus Kokerb. 1869NLDutch politician (1869-1929)
- John KokerUSPh.D. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 1990
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 17 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 604 | #39,333 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 562 | #37,319 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 530 | #41,100 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7 | #79,838 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 Councillor and Ordinary-MP/PCMP results tables | 2012 | 1 | #24 |
| SL Sierra Leone | NEC/ECSL — 2012 parliamentary and Local Council nominated candidates | 2012 | 1 | #24 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Koker come from?
- 1. from Middle Dutch coker ‘case’, ‘sheath’, ‘cover’, perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a maker of such articles or for a messenger or official who carried letters or documents in a case. 2. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Koker?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkoʊkɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Koker mean?
- In English, A sluice.
- In which country does Koker have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.9 thousand people named Koker in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled koker.
- How common is the name Koker?
- In the United States, the national register counted 530 people named Koker in 2010, about 1 in 628 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Koker?
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/kokerThe 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, “Koker”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.