Popova

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/pɑpəvə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Popova 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.

rarermore common
  • BGBulgaria≈1 in 621(inferred from the name graph)
  • RURussia≈1 in 514as Попова
  • UAUkraine≈1 in 1.2Kas Попова

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 Popova 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)

≈280,000 named Попова, est.

#184 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
203 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 621 (inferred from the name graph)

Bulgaria, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

PopovaLatin(measured from records)
ПоповаCyrillic(measured from records)
ปอปอThai(measured from records)
ΠοποβGreek(measured from records)
პოპოვაGeorgian(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Popov in BG Bulgaria, PL Poland, RS Serbia, Попов in BY Belarus, CN China, UZ Uzbekistan and Попова in RU Russia, UA Ukraine.

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

No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Popova 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 Popova is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RU Russia#2≈280,000 est.≈1 in 514—Попова203
UA Ukraine#12≈37,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Попова77
BG Bulgaria#34≈11,000 est.≈1 in 621—Popov127
CN China#675≈6,700 est.≈1 in 208K—Попов6
UZ Uzbekistan#85≈6,100 est.≈1 in 5K—Попов12
BY Belarus#3≈5,400 est.≈1 in 1.8K2Попов25
RS Serbia#164≈4,300 est.≈1 in 1.6KlistedPopov38
PL Poland—2,3751 in 16K2.4KPopov30

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); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Popova is also recorded as 3 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, Russia, United Kingdom

    Also written Popová

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Russia, Spain, United States

    Languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese

    Also written Popová

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Popová

35 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Popova 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 Latvian, pilsēta Bulgārijā ("Popovo"), Targovištes apgabalā, 16000 iedzīvotāju (2014. g.)

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

1850190019502000Liubov Popova, b. 1889Margarita Popova, b. 1956Larisa Popova, b. 1957Valentina Popova, b. 1960Valentina Popova, b. 1972Mariana Popova, b. 1978Dilyana Popova, b. 1981Veronika Popova, b. 1991Daria Popova, b. 1993Polina Popova, b. 1995

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 Popova,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 29 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Popova
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262.4K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2.4K#1,088
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2#374,813

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

How do you pronounce Popova?
A machine transcription gives /pɑpəvə/ (IPA) for Russian.
In which country does Popova 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 Popova?
In Poland, the national register counted 2,375 people named Popova in 2026, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
How common is Popova compared with other names?
In Russia, Popova is the 2nd most common surname of 1,952,411 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Popova?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Popova” — the 2nd most common surname in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Popova parses inside a full name →