Novak

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Novak is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country. In Czechia it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: Czech and Slovak, Croatian and Serbian, Slovenian, Hungarian (Novak), and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from Slavic novy ‘new’, denoting a newcomer to a place.

rarermore common
  • CZCzechia1 in 316(measured from records)
  • SKSlovakia1 in 1.1K
  • USUnited States1 in 9.4K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Novak 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)

198,125 named Nowak, 2026

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
483 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 200 (inferred from the name graph)

Slovenia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NovakLatin(measured from records)
โนวัคThai(measured from records)

Locally spelled Novák in SK Slovakia.

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)

Czech and Slovak, Croatian and Serbian, Slovenian, Hungarian (Novak), and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from Slavic novy ‘new’, denoting a newcomer to a place. Compare English Newman.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Novak 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.

Where Novak is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PL Poland—198,125as Nowak1 in 193100KNovak60
US United States#81235,4611 in 9.4K35KNovak483
CZ Czechia#133,8701 in 31634KNovak151
HR Croatia—10,7941 in 39211K—3
SI Slovenia#17810,5101 in 20011KNovak48
SK Slovakia#374,8791 in 1.1K4.9KNovák79

198,125 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling nowak. 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Novak is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Croatian surname30 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Slovenia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, English

    Also written Novac, Новак, Novák, Nova̕k, Новац

  • French surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Novák, Nóvak, Növak

  • Ukrainian surname17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Türkiye

    Languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian

    Also written Новак, Novac, Novák, Nôvak, Novâk

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Novàk, Novãk, Nóvak, Noväk, Novák

  • Hindi surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Slovenia

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Novák, নোভাক

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Novák

53 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Novak 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.

  • also a topographic name for a peasant who settled on newly cleared land.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, from Czech Novák, a nickname for a newcomer, from novy ‘new’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • In English, Kim, US actress

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Russian, Grinets Novak, servant. 1552.

    as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)

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)

1850190019502000Jane Novak, b. 1896Robert Novak, b. 1931Kim Novak, b. 1933Michael Novak, b. 1933Mel Novak, b. 1934John Novak, b. 1955Džoni Novak, b. 1969Kayvan Novak, b. 1977B. J. Novak, b. 1979Steve Novak, b. 1983

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 73 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Novak
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201035K#980
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200035K#899
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202034K#1,021
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)202111K#6
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—11K#1
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021)20219.7K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026894—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—894#3,531
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)2026787—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—787#3,953
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—55#27,357

Reference works 11

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 Novak mean?
Recorded meaning: Czech and Slovak, Croatian and Serbian, Slovenian, Hungarian (Novak), and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from Slavic novy ‘new’, denoting a newcomer to a place.
Where does the name Novak come from?
Czech and Slovak, Croatian and Serbian, Slovenian, Hungarian (Novak), and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): from Slavic novy ‘new’, denoting a newcomer to a place. Compare English Newman. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Novak have the most bearers?
In Poland, the national register counted about 198 thousand people named Nowak, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Novak most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Novak is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 200 people — even though Poland holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Novak?
In the United States, the national register counted 35,461 people named Novak in 2010, about 1 in 9.4 thousand residents.
How common is Novak compared with other names?
In Czechia, Novak is the most common surname of 114,573 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Novak?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/novak

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Novak” — the most common surname in Czechia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Novak parses inside a full name →