Zajac
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Polish/Wendish 'hare'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Zajac is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common surname.
- PLPoland1 in 717(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 53K
- USUnited States1 in 63K
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
- 314 (measured from records)
- 1 in 717 (inferred from the name graph)
53,382 people, 2026
Highest-authority source
Poland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Polish/Wendish 'hare'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zajac 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 | #15 | 53,382 | 1 in 717 | 27K | Zajac | 128 |
| CN China | — | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 57K | — | Zajac | 4 |
| US United States | — | 5,270 | 1 in 63K | 5.3K | Zajac | 314 |
| SK Slovakia | #133 | 2,072 | 1 in 2.6K | 2.1K | Zajac | 54 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 53K | 345 | Zajac | 94 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 627 | 1 in 17K | 627 | Zajac | 45 |
| NO Norway | — | 392 | 1 in 14K | 392 | Zajac | 9 |
| BZ Belize | #207 | ≈33 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Zajac | 1 |
53,382 people counted by dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames), 2026, counting the spelling zając. 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); MVČR — living population register 2017; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Zajac 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.
In Serbo-Croatian, (regional, Torlakian) hare, rabbit
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In hsb, hare
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)
- Leanard Zajacb. 1890BYBelarusian politician (1890-1935)
- Peter Zajacb. 1946SKSlovak literary historian, translator, critic
- Rudolf Zajacb. 1951SKSlovak politician
- Yuri Zajacb. 1956UAUkrainian sport cyclist
- Richard Zajacb. 1976SKSlovak soccer player
- Thomas Zajacb. 1985ATAustrian sailor
- Travis Zajacb. 1985CACanadian ice hockey player
- Darcy Zajacb. 1986CACanadian ice hockey player
- Kelly Zajacb. 1988CACanadian ice hockey player
- Ihar Zajacb. 1999BYBelarusian association football player
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 35 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.3K | #6,444 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.1K | #6,141 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.1K | #6,456 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 2.1K | — |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 627 | #2,349 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 626 | #1,557 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 626 | #2,271 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 392 | #3,713 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 345 | #14,874 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 71 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 71 | #39,243 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 38 | — |
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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Zajac mean, and where does it come from?
- Polish/Wendish 'hare' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Zajac have the most bearers?
- In Poland, the national register counted about 53 thousand people named Zajac, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zajac.
- Where is Zajac most common?
- Zajac is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 717 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Zajac?
- In Poland, the national register counted 53,382 people named Zajac in 2026, about 1 in 717 residents.
- How common is Zajac compared with other names?
- In Poland, Zajac is the 15th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zajac?
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/zajacThe 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, “Zajac” — the 15th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.