Poles
surname · Latin script
Meaning: variante dialetal setentrional, redução de Polese
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Poles is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 689K(measured from records)
- SISlovenia1 in 23K
- HUHungary≈1 in 47K
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.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 169 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,300 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Slovenia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
variante dialetal setentrional, redução de Polese
Sources 1
- Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Poles 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 79K | — | Poles | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 931 | 1 in 227K | 931 | — | 1 |
| US United States | 483 | 1 in 689K | 560 | Poles | 169 |
| IT Italy | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 149K | — | Poles | 25 |
| FR France | ≈250 est. | ≈1 in 268K | 27 | — | 1 |
| HU Hungary | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 47K | — | Poles | 5 |
| SI Slovenia | 91 | 1 in 23K | 91 | — | 2 |
| CZ Czechia | 86 | 1 in 124K | 86 | — | — |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); MVČR — living population register 2017; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Poles 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.
In Galician, second-person singular present indicative of pulir
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Indonesian, polish: a substance used to polish
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Asturian, for the, by the
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)
- Leslie Poles Hartleyb. 1895GBBritish novelist and short story writer (1895–1972)
- Major Polesb. 1902joined the Northern Rhodesia Game and Tsetse Control Department - now the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Zambia - and was given charge of a vast area centred on Mpika, which included the Luangwa Valley (1902–1990)
- Eva Polesb. 1971ITItalian singer
- Rok Polesb. 1973SISlovenian architect
- Peter Polesb. 1978SISlovenian television personality
- Tanja PolesSIresearcher
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 25 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 931 | #9,917 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 560 | #41,826 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 483 | #44,500 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 447 | #45,149 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 91 | #4,789 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 86 | #19,098 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 86 | #8,290 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 55 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 46 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 34 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 32 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 31 | — |
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What does the name Poles mean?
- Recorded meaning: variante dialetal setentrional, redução de Polese
- In which country does Poles have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.3 thousand people named Poles in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled poles.
- Where is Poles most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Poles is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though Congo - Kinshasa holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Poles?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 931 people named Poles, about 1 in 227 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Poles?
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/polesThe 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, “Poles”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.