Kotek
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname from Western Slavic kotek ‘kitten’ or ‘little tom cat’, diminutive of kot ‘cat’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkoʊˌtɛk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kotek is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Czechia than in any other country.
- CZCzechia1 in 7.1K(measured from records)
- SKSlovakia1 in 49K
- PLPoland1 in 101K
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 Kotek 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.
- Czechia (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 66 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.1K (inferred from the name graph)
1,498 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Котэк in BY Belarus.
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)
nickname from Western Slavic kotek ‘kitten’ or ‘little tom cat’, diminutive of kot ‘cat’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kotek 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | #726 | 1,498 | 1 in 7.1K | 1.5K | Kotek | 66 |
| US United States | — | 468 | 1 in 711K | 468 | Kotek | 24 |
| PL Poland | — | 380 | 1 in 101K | 197 | Kotek | 32 |
| SK Slovakia | — | 112 | 1 in 49K | 112 | Kotek | 11 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈79 est. | ≈1 in 837K | — | Kotek | 8 |
| BY Belarus | — | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 533K | — | Котэк | 2 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 701K | listed | — | 2 |
1,498 people counted by MVČR — living population register 2017. 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: MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census). 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)
Kotek 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.
In Polish, diminutive of kot; kitty (small or young cat)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Russian, dim of Kot.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In Malay, tail
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)
- Iosif Kotekb. 1855UARussian composer and musician (1855–1885)
- Václav Kotekb. 1953CZCzech actor (1953-2019)
- Joël Kotekb. 1958BEBelgian historian and writer
- Petr Kotekb. 1963Czech director
- Tina Kotekb. 1966USGovernor of Oregon since 2021
- Daniel Kotekb. 1971chess player
- Monika Kotekb. 1973PLPolish sport cyclist born 1973
- Vojtěch Kotekb. 1988CZCzech actor
- Anicka Delgadob. 2002USnot in their usual nameEcuadorian swimmer
- Elliot V KotekAUAustralian lawyer
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 20 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 1.5K | #843 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1.5K | #845 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 468 | #45,653 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 465 | #48,977 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 439 | #45,829 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 197 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 197 | #16,421 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 183 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 183 | #17,847 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 112 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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
- What does the name Kotek mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname from Western Slavic kotek ‘kitten’ or ‘little tom cat’, diminutive of kot ‘cat’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kotek?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkoʊˌtɛk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kotek have the most bearers?
- In Czechia, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Kotek, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kotek.
- Where is Kotek most common?
- Kotek is densest in Czechia, where the national register counts about 1 in 7.1 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kotek?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 1,498 people named Kotek, about 1 in 7.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Kotek compared with other names?
- In Czechia, Kotek is the 726th most common surname of 114,573 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kotek?
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/kotekThe 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, “Kotek” — the 726th most common surname in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.