Norkus
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. nickname from a derivative of noras ‘wish’, ‘desire’, ‘will’ or noreti ‘to want’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnɔɹkɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Norkus is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 62K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 159K
- DKDenmark1 in 451K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 7 (measured from records)
- 1 in 62K (inferred from the name graph)
681 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
1. nickname from a derivative of noras ‘wish’, ‘desire’, ‘will’ or noreti ‘to want’. 2. derivative of the personal name Norkantas.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Norkus 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.
681 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Norkus is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Plg. Norka, Norkas, Norkys (ž..). Spėjama, kad gali būti trumpiniai iš sudurtinių asmenvardžių — *Nor-kantas ar pan. (žr. 2. Zinkevičius, 1977, p. 230). Bet gali būti ir tiesiog iš noras, norėti, norūs (žr. Noreika) ar pan. Dėl tokios darybos plg. plėpkus „plepys“, šlapkus „šlapias žmogus“, tūpkus „kuris tūpčioja“ (P. Skardžius, 1941, p. 124), pvd. Juodkus :jūodas ir pan
as a nameLietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames)
In German, Prussian name
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Pijus Norkusb. 1885LTLithuanian journalist and editor
- Alfred Norkusb. 1901DEGerman-Austrian sound engineer
- Vladas Norkusb. 1909LTLithuanian painter and graphic artist
- Herbert Norkusb. 1916DEMartyr for Hitler Youth (1916–1932)
- Vytautas Norkusb. 1921LTLithuanian basketball player (born 1921)
- Alfonsas Norkusb. 1951LTLithuanian university teacher
- Zenonas Norkusb. 1958LTLithuanian author, translator and university teacher
- Renatas Norkusb. 1967LTLithuanian jurist
- Rimvydas Norkusb. 1979LTLithuanian judge and university teacher
- Kiley Norkusb. 1995USAmerican soccer player
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 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 692 | #35,096 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 681 | #33,499 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 681 | #31,986 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 88 | #16,980 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 35 | #30,900 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 22 | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 22 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 22 | #85,062 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 20 | #24,906 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 17 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 17 | #99,404 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 13 | #32,516 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Norkus come from?
- 1. nickname from a derivative of noras ‘wish’, ‘desire’, ‘will’ or noreti ‘to want’. 2. derivative of the personal name Norkantas. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Norkus?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnɔɹkɪs/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Norkus mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. nickname from a derivative of noras ‘wish’, ‘desire’, ‘will’ or noreti ‘to want’.
- In which country does Norkus have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 681 people named Norkus, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled norkus.
- Where is Norkus most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Norkus is densest in Norway — about 1 in 62 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Norkus?
- In the United States, the national register counted 681 people named Norkus in 2010, about 1 in 488 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Norkus?
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/norkusThe 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, “Norkus”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.