Pollak

surname · Latin script

Meaning: The Slavic word means “the Polish” (The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Pollak is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 3,908 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.

  • SKSlovakia1 in 3.9K(measured from records)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 7.2Kfew records
  • CZCzechia1 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). 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.

United States (measured from records)

3,908 people, 2010

Record sources
299 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 3.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Slovakia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

The Slavic word means “the Polish”. Moses Valentin Pollak was the “Sir of Eisenstadt” by 1781. Pollatschek is shortened as “Pollat”. The form “Bollag” is very common in Switzerland.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Pollak is found

(measured from records)

Pollak 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 Pollak is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—3,9081 in 85K3.9KPollak299
DE Germany—≈2,700 est.≈1 in 32K—Pollak105
SK Slovakia—1,3831 in 3.9K1.4KPollak44
AT Austria#646≈1,300 est.≈1 in 7.2K—Pollak71
GB United Kingdom—≈580 est.≈1 in 119K225Pollak78
CZ Czechia—3371 in 32K337Pollak38
SI Slovenia—561 in 38K56—5

3,908 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); MVČR — living population register 2017; 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Pollák

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Pollák, Pollâk, Pollaḳ

  • Croatian surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Netherlands, Slovenia

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, Serbian

    Also written Polak, Полак, Polák, Pollák, Polâk

  • Portuguese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Israel, United Kingdom

    Also written Pollák

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu

    Also written Pollák

  • Arabic surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, United States, Palestine, Morocco

    Also written Pollák

38 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.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
194019501960Eve Pollard, b. 1945Burglinde Pollak, b. 1951Kevin Pollak, b. 1957

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)
FormalDear Pollak,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

34 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Pollak come from?
The Slavic word means “the Polish”. Moses Valentin Pollak was the “Sir of Eisenstadt” by 1781. Pollatschek is shortened as “Pollat”. The form “Bollag” is very common in Switzerland. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
What does the name Pollak mean?
Recorded meaning: The Slavic word means “the Polish”.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Pollak?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.9 thousand people named Pollak, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pollak. After it come Germany, Slovakia, Austria and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Pollak most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pollak is densest in Slovakia — about 1 in 3.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Pollak?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,908 people named Pollak in 2010, about 1 in 85 thousand residents.
How common is Pollak compared with other names?
In Austria, Pollak is the 646th most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Pollak?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pollak

The 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, “Pollak” — ranked 8453rd in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Pollak parses inside a full name →