Kolker

surname · Latin script

Meaning: occupational name for a lime burner, a variant of Kalker (see Kalk, Kalkbrenner)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/colceɾ/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated

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Kolker is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

  • DEGermany≈1 in 170Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 178K
  • USUnited States1 in 465K

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 Kolker itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.

United States (measured from records)

716 people, 2010

Record sources
217 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 100K (inferred from the name graph)

Israel, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Kölker in DE Germany and Koelker in VA Vatican City.

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)

occupational name for a lime burner, a variant of Kalker (see Kalk, Kalkbrenner).

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where the surname Kolker is found

(measured from records)

Kolker 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 Kolker is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7161 in 465K717Kolker217
DE Germany—≈510 est.≈1 in 165K—Kölker46
GB United Kingdom—≈140 est.≈1 in 487K—Kolker37
IL Israel—≈100 est.≈1 in 100K—Kolker6
NL Netherlands—971 in 178K97Kolker22
AU Australia—≈57 est.≈1 in 474K—Kolker22
VA Vatican City#620———Koelker3

716 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 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

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

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Colombia, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Kölker

  • Russian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, United States, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Колкер, Ḳolḳer

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Kölker

  • Danish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Kölker

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Kölker

31 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)

Kolker 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.

  • habitational name for someone from a place called KoUd in Ukraine.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)
18501900195020002050Henry Kolker, b. 1870Boris Kolker, b. 1939Ava Kolker, b. 2006

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 Kolker,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

11 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Kolker mean, and where does it come from?
occupational name for a lime burner, a variant of Kalker (see Kalk, Kalkbrenner). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Kolker?
In Spanish /colceɾ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Kolker?
In the United States, the national register counted about 716 people named Kolker, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kolker. After it come Germany, United Kingdom, Israel and Netherlands; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Kolker?
In the United States, the national register counted 716 people named Kolker in 2010, about 1 in 465 thousand residents.
How common is Kolker compared with other names?
In Vatican City, Kolker is the 620th most common surname of 1,275 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Kolker?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Kolker” — the 620th most common surname in Vatican City. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Kolker parses inside a full name →