Popov
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Popov is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: vodka brand.
- RSSerbia≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- UZUzbekistan≈1 in 5K
- USUnited States1 in 192K
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 Popov 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.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #184 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 203 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈280,000 named Попова, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Serbia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Попов in BY Belarus, CN China, UZ Uzbekistan, Попова in RU Russia, UA Ukraine and Popova in US United States.
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)
vodka brand
Sources 1
- Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Popov 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #2 | ≈280,000 est. | ≈1 in 514 | — | Попова | 203 |
| UA Ukraine | #12 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Попова | 77 |
| BG Bulgaria | #34 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 621 | — | Popov | 127 |
| CN China | #675 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 208K | — | Попов | 6 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | #85 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Попов | 12 |
| BY Belarus | #3 | ≈5,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 2 | Попов | 25 |
| RS Serbia | #164 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | listed | Popov | 38 |
| US United States | — | 1,728 | 1 in 192K | 1.9K | Popova | 196 |
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: Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Popov is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A transliteration of the Bulgarian surname Попов (Popov).
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)
- Aleksandr Popovb. 1859RURussian physicist (1859–1906)
- Vladimir Popovb. 1887RURussian and Soviet actor (1887-1955)
- Liubov Popovab. 1889RURussian artist (1889-1924)
- Markian Popovb. 1902RUSoviet general (1902-1969)
- Gavriil Popovb. 1904RURussian Soviet composer (1904–1972)
- Oleg Popovb. 1930RUSoviet and Russian clown and circus artist (1930–2016)
- Gabriel Popovb. 1936RU1st Mayor of Moscow
- Leonid Popovb. 1945UASoviet cosmonaut
- Aleksandr Popovb. 1971RURussian swimmer and politician (born 1971)
- Goran Popovb. 1984MKNorth Macedonian footballer
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 36 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #15,028 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #16,593 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #21,438 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Popov mean, and where does it come from?
- vodka brand Recorded by Pronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names.
- In which country does Popov have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 276 thousand people named Попова in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Popov?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,728 people named Popov in 2010, about 1 in 192 thousand residents.
- How common is Popov compared with other names?
- In Russia, Popov is the 2nd most common surname of 1,952,411 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Popov?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/popovThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Popov” — the 2nd most common surname in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.