Kulpa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname from Latin culpa ‘fault’, ‘guilt’, a nickname for an apologetic person who frequently used the Latin expression mea culpa ‘my fault’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkəɫpə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kulpa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 6.7K(measured from records)
- UAUkraine≈1 in 147Kas Кульпа
- CNChina≈1 in 132K
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 Kulpa 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 82 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.7K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Кульпа in UA Ukraine, CN China.
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 Latin culpa ‘fault’, ‘guilt’, a nickname for an apologetic person who frequently used the Latin expression mea culpa ‘my fault’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kulpa 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 132K | — | Кульпа | 1 |
| PL Poland | 5,697 | 1 in 6.7K | 2.9K | Kulpa | 78 |
| US United States | 1,122 | 1 in 296K | 1.1K | Kulpa | 82 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 147K | — | Кульпа | 12 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈260 est. | ≈1 in 253K | — | Kulpa | 25 |
| NO Norway | 40 | 1 in 137K | 40 | — | 3 |
| SK Slovakia | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 147K | — | Kulpa | 7 |
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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Kulpa is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
—žr. Kulpys
as a nameLietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
In Indonesian, culpa: negligence or fault, as distinguishable from dolus (deceit, fraud), which implies intent, culpa being imputable to defect of intellect, dolus to defect of heart
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bik, subsidence, evaporation
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In lad, guilt; guiltiness
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Esperanto, guilty
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)
- Bismarck Kulpab. 1886AUAustralian rules footballer (1886-1960)
- Stanisław Grodziskib. 1889PLnot in their usual namePolish lawyer
- Rudolf Kulpab. 1906EEEstonian translator and philosopher (1906-1997)
- Jan Kulpab. 1939PLPolish biochemist
- Zenon Kulpab. 1946PLPolish computer scientist
- Mariusz Kulpab. 1946PLPolish sculptor
- Ron Kulpab. 1968USbaseball umpire from the United States
- Barbara Koclega KulpaPLPolish mathematician
- Krzysztof KulpaPLPolish engineer
- Władysław KulpaPLPolish mathematician
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 25 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2.9K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2.9K | #831 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2.8K | #850 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #21,273 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.1K | #22,827 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.1K | #24,425 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 40 | #30,053 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
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 Kulpa mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname from Latin culpa ‘fault’, ‘guilt’, a nickname for an apologetic person who frequently used the Latin expression mea culpa ‘my fault’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kulpa?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkəɫpə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kulpa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Kulpa in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled кульпа.
- Where is Kulpa most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kulpa is densest in Poland — about 1 in 6.7 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kulpa?
- In Poland, the national register counted 5,697 people named Kulpa in 2026, about 1 in 6.7 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kulpa?
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/kulpaThe 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, “Kulpa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.