Pelikan
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A surname from Czech of German or Czech origin
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈpeːliˌkaːn/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Pelikan is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Czechia than in any other country.
- CZCzechia1 in 5.6K(measured from records)
- SKSlovakia1 in 25K
- HRCroatia1 in 32K
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 Pelikan itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Czechia (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 56 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.6K (inferred from the name graph)
1,916 people
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)from house sign or nickname 'pelican'; cf. Pellicanus 'furrier'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pelikan is read
(measured from records)Pelikan is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English55%
A surname from Czech of German or Czech origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German18%
from house sign or nickname 'pelican'; cf. Pellicanus 'furrier'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from a house name 'pelican', symbol of Christ
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
- Polish6.1%
pelican (any seabird of the family Pelecanidae)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Croatian5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pelikan in Croatian.
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)Pelikan 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.
1,916 people counted by MVČR — living population register 2017, counting the spelling pelikán. 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: MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)Pelikan 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.
In Norwegian Nynorsk, a pelican (seabird)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, pelican (seabird)
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)- Wacław Pelikanb. 1790BYPolish doctor
- Anton Pelikanb. 1861ATAustrian mineralogist
- Josip Pelikanb. 1885ITSlovenian photographer
- Jaroslav Pelikanb. 1923USUS historian of Christianity, Christian theology and medieval intellectual history at Yale (1923–2006)
- Zbigniew Pelikanb. 1923PLPolish Righteous Among the Nations
- Franz Pelikanb. 1925ATAustrian footballer (1925-1994)
- Fritz Pelikanb. 1934ATAustrian politician (1934-1996)
- Jürgen M. Pelikanb. 1940ATAustrian sociologist
- Peter Pelikanb. 1941ATAustrian architect
- Lisa Pelikanb. 1954USAmerican 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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 513 | #44,979 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 483 | #44,500 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 474 | #42,983 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 218 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 218 | #15,184 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 217 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 217 | #14,964 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 132 | #6,211 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 120 | — |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 24 | #12,204 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 6 | #111,488 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 6 | #19,929 |
Reference works 4
- 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
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 Pelikan come from?
- from house sign or nickname 'pelican'; cf. Pellicanus 'furrier' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Pelikan?
- In German /ˈpeːliˌkaːn/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Pelikan mean?
- In English, A surname from Czech of German or Czech origin.
- In which country does Pelikan have the most bearers?
- In Czechia, the national register counted about 1.9 thousand people named Pelikan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pelikan.
- Where is Pelikan most common?
- Pelikan is densest in Czechia, where the national register counts about 1 in 5.6 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Pelikan?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 1,916 people named Pelikan, about 1 in 5.6 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pelikan?
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/pelikanThe 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, “Pelikan”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.