Kolev

surname · Latin script

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

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

Kolev is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bulgaria than in any other country, where it is the 25th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 694K(measured from records)
  • BGBulgaria1 in 250as Колев
  • RSSerbia≈1 in 38K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Kolev itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Bulgaria (measured from records)

27,859 named Колев, 2022

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
158 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 38K (inferred from the name graph)

Serbia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

KolevLatin(measured from records)
КолевCyrillic(measured from records)

Locally spelled Колев in RU Russia, FI Finland, MK North Macedonia.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Kolev 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 Kolev is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BG Bulgaria#2527,859as Колев1 in 25028KKolev158
CN China—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 646K—Kolev2
RU Russia—≈510 est.≈1 in 281K—Колев26
US United States—4791 in 694K550Kolev150
ES Spain—3861 in 130K386Kolev38
RS Serbia—≈180 est.≈1 in 38K—Kolev12
FI Finland—821 in 68K82Колев2
NO Norway—801 in 68K80—9
MK North Macedonia#31471as Колев1 in 30K71Колев14

27,859 people counted by NSI — most common surnames (annual press release), 2022, counting the spelling колев. 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: NSI — most common surnames (annual press release); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); State Statistical Office — living population names. 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)

Kolev is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, United States, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Колев, Кольев, Кольєв, Kol'Ev, Колёв

  • Greek surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Greece

    Also written Κολεβ

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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1850190019502000Ivan Kolev, b. 1863Ivan Petkov Kolev, b. 1930Stancho Kolev, b. 1937Todor Kolev, b. 1939Ivan Kolev, b. 1951Vladimir Kolev, b. 1953Stefan Kolev, b. 1966Atanas Kolev, b. 1967Stoyan Kolev, b. 1976Todor Kolev, b. 1980

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)

FormalУважаеми(а) Kolev,Dear Kolev, (English)
InformalУважаеми(а) Kolev,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 27 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Kolev
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020550#42,463
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010479#44,808
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—386#9,843
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—386#9,824
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000209#83,618
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—82#14,901
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—80#18,489
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • 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

How do you pronounce Kolev?
A machine transcription gives /koʊɫɛv/ (IPA) for Bulgarian.
In which country does Kolev have the most bearers?
In Bulgaria, the national register counted about 28 thousand people named Колев, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Kolev?
In the United States, the national register counted 479 people named Kolev in 2010, about 1 in 694 thousand residents.
How common is Kolev compared with other names?
In Bulgaria, Kolev is the 25th most common surname of 67,606 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kolev?

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

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, “Kolev” — the 25th most common surname in Bulgaria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kolev parses inside a full name →