Pasternak
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Polish: Ashkenazic): from Pol., Ukr., Russ., and E Yid. pasternak parsnip (MFIG pastinake, from L pastinaca), appar¬ ently a nickname or arbitrarily adopted surname taken from the plant
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈpæstɝnæk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pasternak is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 4K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 143K
- ILIsrael1 in 9.3Kas פסטרנק
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 Pasternak 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)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 122 (measured from records)
- 1 in 4.0K (inferred from the name graph)
9,586 people, 2026
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Пастернак in UA Ukraine, RU Russia and פסטרנק in IL Israel, RO Romania.
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)
Russian term of Pastinak , as salad trader or parsley.
Sources 1
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pasternak is read(measured from records)
Pasternak is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English56%
Boris L., Russian author (Nobel
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Ukrainian12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pasternak in Ukrainian.
- Polish9.5%
Ashkenazic): from Pol., Ukr., Russ., and E Yid. pasternak parsnip (MFIG pastinake, from L pastinaca), appar¬ ently a nickname or arbitrarily adopted surname taken from the plant. In the case of the Jewish name, this is one of the many ornamental names based on words denoting plants. Vars.: Pasternack, Pastinack.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pasternak 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 | #476 | 9,586 | 1 in 4K | 4.8K | Pasternak | 106 |
| UA Ukraine | — | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | — | Пастернак | 41 |
| KP North Korea | #352 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | — | Pasternak | 2 |
| US United States | — | 2,329 | 1 in 143K | 2.4K | Pasternak | 108 |
| RU Russia | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 66K | — | Пастернак | 122 |
| RO Romania | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | פסטרנק | 2 |
| IL Israel | — | 931as פסטרנק | 1 in 9.3K | 931 | פסטרנק | 39 |
9,586 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: CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000. 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)
Pasternak 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.
Russian term of Pastinak , as salad trader or parsley.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In Italian, A transliteration of the Russian surname Пастерна́к (Pastɛrnák)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Croatian, moderan ruski pjesnik, novelist, svjetski poznat po romanu Doktor Živago , štampanom prvi put u Italiji (1957); Nobelova nagrada 1958 (nije ju prihvatio nakon kampanje protiv njega u SSSR-u); prevodio na ruski Shakespearea, Goethea, Rilkea, Verlainea
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Leonid Pasternakb. 1862RURussian artist (1862-1945)
- Boris Pasternakb. 1890RURussian writer (1890–1960)
- Alexander Pasternakb. 1893RUSoviet engineer, architect, urban planner
- Evgenia Lurieb. 1898BYnot in their usual nameRussian artist, wife of Boris Pasternak (1899-1965)
- Joe Pasternakb. 1901USHungarian film producer (1901-1991)
- Leon Pasternakb. 1909PLPolish writer
- Yevgeny Pasternakb. 1923RUSoviet literary critic, literary historian (1923–2012)
- Harley Pasternakb. 1974CACanadian personal trainer
- Natalia Pasternakb. 1976BRBrazilian biologist and science advocate
- Reagan Pasternakb. 1977CACanadian actress
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 31 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4.8K | #401 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 4.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 4.8K | #413 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.4K | #11,851 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.4K | #12,540 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,142 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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)
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 Pasternak come from?
- Russian term of Pastinak , as salad trader or parsley. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
- How do you pronounce Pasternak?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpæstɝnæk/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Pasternak mean?
- In Polish, Ashkenazic): from Pol., Ukr., Russ., and E Yid. pasternak parsnip (MFIG pastinake, from L pastinaca), appar¬ ently a nickname or arbitrarily adopted surname taken from the plant.
- In which country does Pasternak have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 9.6 thousand people named Pasternak, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pasternak.
- Where is Pasternak most common?
- Pasternak is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 4.0 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Pasternak?
- In Poland, the national register counted 9,586 people named Pasternak in 2026, about 1 in 4.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Pasternak compared with other names?
- In Poland, Pasternak is the 476th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pasternak?
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/pasternakThe 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, “Pasternak” — the 476th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.