Rank

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: (i) from the medieval personal name Rank, short for Rankin; (ii) nickname for a powerful or headstrong person

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Rank is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 22K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 100K
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 108K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈3,700 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
294 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)

Estonia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RankLatin(measured from records)
랭크Hangul(measured from records)

Locally spelled Ränk in EE Estonia.

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)

(i) from the medieval personal name Rank, short for Rankin; (ii) nickname for a powerful or headstrong person

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

How Rank is read(measured from records)

Rank is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English69%

    (i) from the medieval personal name Rank, short for Rankin; (ii) nickname for a powerful or headstrong person

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    OE ranc, ME rank ‘strong, proud’; first attested John Ronk 1327 SRSf

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

    someone of violent emotions, from the ME adj. rank (OE ranc proud, rebellious). 2. from a medieval given name, a back-formation from the dim. Rankin. Ranis see Raine

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

    Strong; powerful; capable of acting or being used with great effect; energetic; vigorous; headstrong.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • German14%

    nd. 'slender'; also from Germanic *ragin- / *ran-; as a place-name 'slope, bend'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    lithe, lissome

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Rank 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 Rank is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany—≈3,700 est.≈1 in 22KlistedRank114
US United States—3,3391 in 100K3.3KRank294
KP North Korea—≈1,200 est.≈1 in 21K—Rank1
BR Brazil—9811 in 216K981—2
GB United Kingdom—≈610 est.≈1 in 108K310Rank87
DK Denmark—2371 in 25K237Rank47
IE Ireland—≈98 est.≈1 in 53K—Rank5
EE Estonia#879≈78 est.≈1 in 16K33Ränk12

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; the dfa-band-5 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)

Rank is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi surname5 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Ränk, Ráñk

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ränk

  • Polish surname4 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Polish, Czech

    Also written Ränk

48 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)

18001850190019502000Joseph Rank, b. 1816Josef Rank, b. 1833Franz Rank, b. 1870Otto Rank, b. 1884J. Arthur Rank, b. 1888Heiner Rank, b. 1931Michael Rank, b. 1950Wally Rank, b. 1958Werner Rank, b. 1968Elisabeth Rank, b. 1984

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 Mr Rank,
InformalHi Rank,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 33 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Rank
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.3K#9,716
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.2K#9,374
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203K#10,121
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—981#9,426
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002310#16,001
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—237#2,066
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—33#3,160
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—27#4,081
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 5———
GB United KingdomA Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Rank mean, and where does it come from?
(i) from the medieval personal name Rank, short for Rankin; (ii) nickname for a powerful or headstrong person Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Rank?
In the etymology graph, Wrench is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Rank?
A machine transcription gives /ɹæŋk/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Rank have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.7 thousand people named Rank in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rank.
How common is the name Rank?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,339 people named Rank in 2010, about 1 in 100 thousand residents.
How common is Rank compared with other names?
In Estonia, Rank is the 879th most common surname of 37,297 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Rank?

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

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, “Rank” — the 879th most common surname in Estonia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Rank parses inside a full name →