Wolny
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Wolny is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country. Recorded meaning: slow (happening at a lesser tempo).
- PLPoland1 in 5.2K(measured from records)
- CZCzechia1 in 127K
- NONorway1 in 171K
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.
- Poland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 87 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.2K (inferred from the name graph)
7,425 people, 2026
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
slow (happening at a lesser tempo)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wolny 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | #960 | 7,425 | 1 in 5.2K | 5K | Wolny | 87 |
| US United States | — | 321 | 1 in 1M | 321 | Wolny | 49 |
| FR France | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 337K | 27 | Wolny | 1 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 378K | — | Wolny | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈110 est. | ≈1 in 618K | 46 | Wolny | 30 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 84 | 1 in 127K | 84 | Wolny | 18 |
| NL Netherlands | — | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 354K | — | Wolny | 9 |
| NO Norway | — | 32 | 1 in 171K | 32 | Wolny | 3 |
7,425 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026. 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: dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; MVČR — living population register 2017; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Wolny 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 zlw-opl, free (unconstrained)
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)
- Andreas Raphael Wolnyb. 1759HUbotanist (1759-1829)
- Joseph Wolnyb. 1844DEGerman politician (1844-1908)
- Konstanty Wolnyb. 1877PLPolish politician and lawyer (1877–1940)
- Janusz Wolnyb. 1954PLPolish physicist
- Dariusz Wolnyb. 1960PLPolish sportsperson
- Ryszard Wolnyb. 1969PLOlympic wrestler
- Dariusz Wolnyb. 1969PLPolish association football player
- Jakub Wolnyb. 1995PLPolish ski jumper
- Katarzyna Wolny-KoładkaPLPolish microbiologist
- Edyta Wolny-RokickaPLPolish physician (cancer radiotherapy)
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 26 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5K | #379 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2.4K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2.4K | #1,063 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 321 | #62,359 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 306 | #61,376 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 297 | #70,918 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 84 | #19,393 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 84 | #2,644 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 84 | #8,366 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 46 | #53,501 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 34 | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Wolny mean, and where does it come from?
- slow (happening at a lesser tempo) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Wolny have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 7.4 thousand people named Wolny, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wolny.
- Where is Wolny most common?
- Wolny is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 5.2 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Wolny?
- In Poland, the national register counted 7,425 people named Wolny in 2026, about 1 in 5.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Wolny compared with other names?
- In Poland, Wolny is the 960th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wolny?
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/wolnyThe same 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), 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, “Wolny” — the 960th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.