Materna
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname from Latin matema, feminine form of the adjective matemus ‘maternal’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mɑˈtɛɹnə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Materna is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- CZCzechia1 in 23K(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 25K
- SKSlovakia1 in 209K
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 Materna 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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 50 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
1,507 people, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Матерна in UA Ukraine.
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 matema, feminine form of the adjective matemus ‘maternal’. It may also be from a this word as a personal name (see Mattern)!
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Materna 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | 1,507 | 1 in 25K | 757 | Materna | 50 |
| CZ Czechia | 466 | 1 in 23K | 472 | Materna | 47 |
| US United States | 348 | 1 in 956K | 348 | Materna | 27 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈59 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Materna | 9 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈56 est. | ≈1 in 788K | — | Матерна | 12 |
| SK Slovakia | 26 | 1 in 209K | 26 | Materna | 8 |
| DK Denmark | 11 | 1 in 534K | 11 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 8 | 1 in 683K | 8 | — | 1 |
1,507 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026. 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); MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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)
Materna is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, third-person singular past historic of materner
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, feminine singular of materno
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, feminine singular of matern
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, inflection of māternus:
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)
- Jan Maternab. 1802CZCzech beekeeper (1802-1876)
- Amalie Maternab. 1844ATAustrian operatic soprano (1844-1918)
- Rudolf Karl Maternab. 1883ATAustrian soldier (1883-1938)
- Friedrich Maternab. 1885ATAustrian general
- Ingo Maternab. 1932DEGerman historian of modern age (1932-2022)
- Krzysztof Maternab. 1948PLPolish actor
- Jerzy Maternab. 1956PLPolish politician
- Tristan Maternab. 1972DEGerman actor
- Anna Materna-KirylukPLPolish pediatrician
- Katarzyna MaternaPLresearcher
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 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 757 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 757 | #4,187 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 750 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 750 | #4,150 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 472 | #3,013 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 466 | #3,292 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 348 | #58,337 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 331 | #57,544 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 327 | #65,511 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 26 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 11 | #37,785 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #62,476 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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)
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
- Where does the name Materna come from?
- nickname from Latin matema, feminine form of the adjective matemus ‘maternal’. It may also be from a this word as a personal name (see Mattern)! Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Materna?
- A machine transcription gives /mɑˈtɛɹnə/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Materna mean?
- Recorded meaning: nickname from Latin matema, feminine form of the adjective matemus ‘maternal’.
- In which country does Materna have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 1.5 thousand people named Materna, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled materna.
- Where is Materna most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Materna is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Materna?
- In Poland, the national register counted 1,507 people named Materna in 2026, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Materna?
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/maternaThe 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, “Materna”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.