Spivak
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Ukr. spivak singer, used as a translation of Kazan
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈspɪvək/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Spivak is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 215K(measured from records)
- ILIsrael1 in 7.7Kas ספיבק
- MDMoldova≈1 in 18K
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 Spivak 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 279 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 18K (inferred from the name graph)
1,550 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Moldova, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled ספיבק in IL Israel, UA Ukraine, PL Poland and 2 more.
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)
Ukr. spivak singer, used as a translation of Kazan. Spychalski Vars.: Spivack; Spi(e)wak, Spievak (from the cogn. Pol. spiewak\ Spivakovsky. Cogn.: Pol.: Spiewak. Spjut Swedish: nickname from Swed. spjut spear, lance, pike, javelin; this is one of the ‘soldiers’ names’ assumed during military service in the 17th and 18th cents, before surnames came into regular use in Sweden. Var.: Spjuth.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Spivak 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 1,550 | 1 in 215K | 1.6K | Spivak | 279 |
| UA Ukraine | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | ספיבק | 16 |
| UZ Uzbekistan | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | ספיבק | 3 |
| IL Israel | #723 | 1,129as ספיבק | 1 in 7.7K | 1.1K | ספיבק | 49 |
| PL Poland | — | 575 | 1 in 67K | 289 | ספיבק | 2 |
| MD Moldova | — | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Spivak | 2 |
| LV Latvia | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | ספיבק | 3 |
1,550 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; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Spivak is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Ukr. spivak singer, used as a translation of Kazan. Vars.: Spivack; Spi(e)wak, Spievak (from the cogn. Pol. spiewak; Spivakovsky. Patr.: Spillings.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, singer, cantor, from Ukrainian spivak ‘singer’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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)
- Nissan Spivakb. 1824LTUkrainian composer and cantor (1824–1906)
- Isaac Spivakb. 1886ILIsraeli writer (1886-1977)
- Lawrence E. Spivakb. 1900USAmerican journalist and Meet the Press host (1900-1994)
- Charlie Spivakb. 1907USAmerican trumpeter and bandleader of Ukrainian Jewish origin (1907–1982)
- Mira Spivakb. 1934CACanadian politician
- Alice Spivakb. 1935USactress
- Michael Spivakb. 1940USAmerican mathematician (1940–2020)
- Marla Spivakb. 1955USAmerican entomologist
- Emiliya Spivakb. 1981RURussian actor
- Sergey Spivakb. 1995MDMoldovan mixed martial artist
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 27 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.6K | #18,007 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.5K | #18,133 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.5K | #17,351 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 289 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 289 | #11,568 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 286 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 286 | #11,440 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
- Where does the name Spivak come from?
- Ukr. spivak singer, used as a translation of Kazan. Spychalski Vars.: Spivack; Spi(e)wak, Spievak (from the cogn. Pol. spiewak\ Spivakovsky. Cogn.: Pol.: Spiewak. Spjut Swedish: nickname from Swed. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- How do you pronounce Spivak?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈspɪvək/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Spivak mean?
- Recorded meaning: Ukr. spivak singer, used as a translation of Kazan.
- In which country does Spivak have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.6 thousand people named Spivak, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled spivak.
- How common is the name Spivak?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,550 people named Spivak in 2010, about 1 in 215 thousand residents.
- How common is Spivak compared with other names?
- In Israel, Spivak is the 723rd most common surname of 325,634 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Spivak?
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/spivakThe 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, “Spivak” — the 723rd most common surname in Israel. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.