Kostov
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kɑstɑv/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kostov is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bulgaria than in any other country, where it is the 47th most common surname.
- BGBulgaria≈1 in 1K(inferred from the name graph)
- UAUkraine≈1 in 99Kas Костов
- RURussia≈1 in 228Kas Костов
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 Kostov 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 (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 124 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,900 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Bulgaria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Костов in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, NO Norway.
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)
Kostov 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BG Bulgaria | #47 | ≈6,900 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Kostov | 124 |
| RU Russia | — | ≈620 est. | ≈1 in 228K | — | Костов | 97 |
| RS Serbia | — | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | Kostov | 16 |
| UA Ukraine | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 99K | — | Костов | 17 |
| US United States | — | 308 | 1 in 1.1M | 308 | Kostov | 104 |
| MK North Macedonia | #143 | 83as Костов | 1 in 26K | 83 | Kostov | 16 |
| NO Norway | — | 80 | 1 in 68K | 80 | Костов | 6 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 48 | 1 in 44K | 48 | Kostov | 3 |
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; State Statistical Office — living population names; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Traycho Kostovb. 1897BGBulgarian politician (1897-1949)
- Ivan Kostov Nikolovb. 1913BGBulgarian mineralogist
- Dimitar Kostovb. 1936BGBulgarian footballer
- Ivan Kostovb. 1949BGBulgarian politician, economist, prime minister
- Hari Kostovb. 1959MKPrime Minister of the Republic of Macedonia
- Nikolay Kostovb. 1963BGBulgarian footballer
- Elitsa Kostovab. 1990BGnot in their usual nameBulgarian tennis player
- Stanislav Kostovb. 1991BGBulgarian footballer
- Kristian Kostovb. 2000RUBulgarian and Russian singer, songwriter and model
- Vasilije Kostovb. 2008RSSerbian footballer
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 26 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 308 | #64,559 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 301 | #70,147 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 141 | #114,852 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 80 | #18,471 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 48 | #7,884 |
| US United States | wru 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 Kostov?
- A machine transcription gives /kɑstɑv/ (IPA) for Bulgarian.
- In which country does Kostov have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.9 thousand people named Kostov in Bulgaria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kostov.
- How common is the name Kostov?
- In the United States, the national register counted 308 people named Kostov in 2010, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
- How common is Kostov compared with other names?
- In Bulgaria, Kostov is the 47th most common surname of 67,606 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kostov?
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/kostovThe 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, “Kostov” — the 47th most common surname in Bulgaria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.