Polanyi
surname · Latin script
Meaning: English argot of theater and circus
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Polanyi is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country.
- HUHungary≈1 in 190K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 259K
- BEBelgium≈1 in 1M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Hungary (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 22 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 190K (inferred from the name graph)
≈51 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Hungary, est.
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)
English argot of theater and circus
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Polanyi 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU Hungary | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 190K | — | Polanyi | 18 |
| AT Austria | ≈34 est. | ≈1 in 259K | — | Polanyi | 12 |
| US United States | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 17M | listed | Polanyi | 22 |
| DE Germany | ≈13 est. | ≈1 in 6.1M | — | Polanyi | 8 |
| BE Belgium | ≈11 est. | ≈1 in 1M | — | Polanyi | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | 4 | 1 in 2.1M | 4 | — | 2 |
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: the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Polanyi 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 English, John C, Canadian chemist (Nobel
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Polar!
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Karl Polanyib. 1886HUHungarian economist, philosopher and historian
- Michael Polanyib. 1891HUHungarian-British polymath (1891–1976)
- John Polanyib. 1929CAHungarian-Canadian chemist
- Janka Polanyib. 1944NONorwegian TV-presenter
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 4 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Polanyi mean, and where does it come from?
- English argot of theater and circus Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Polanyi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 51 people named Polanyi in Hungary, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled polanyi.
- How common is the name Polanyi?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 4 people named Polanyi in 2024, about 1 in 2.1 million residents.
What do you want to know about Polanyi?
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/polanyiThe 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, “Polanyi”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.