Zurek

Name: Zurek: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Sour cereal soup (a type of sour rye soup, originating from Poland) (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026

/zurɛk/(machine-generated) Polish · model-generated

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Zurek is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country: 13,076 people, counted by dane.gov.pl in 2026.

PLPoland1 in 2.9K(measured from records)
CZCzechia1 in 14K
DEGermany≈1 in 53K

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)
Record sources: 232 (measured from records)
: 1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Żurek

Locally spelled Żurek in PL Poland.

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.

How to pronounce Zurek

Polish:/zurɛk/(machine-generated) model-generated

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

Sour cereal soup (a type of sour rye soup, originating from Poland)

Cited for this meaning 1

kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Zurek is found

Zurek 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 Zurek is recorded, by country
Country					Most common spelling	Sources
PL Poland	#218	13,076	1 in 2.9K	6.6K	Żurek	86
DE Germany	—	≈1,600 est.	≈1 in 53K	—	Zurek	90
US United States	—	1,442	1 in 231K	1.5K	Zurek	232
CZ Czechia	#968	785	1 in 14K	785	Zurek	32
GB United Kingdom	—	≈240 est.	≈1 in 284K	101	Zurek	56
NO Norway	—	64	1 in 85K	64	—	3
IE Ireland	—	≈49 est.	≈1 in 109K	—	Zurek	9

13,076 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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 names spelled this way

Zurek is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

Spanish surname6 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Colombia, Brazil
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese
Also written Żurek, Žůrek, Zürek
French surname4 spellings in the group
Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada
Also written Żurek, Žůrek
a separate name5 spellings in the group
Also written Zůrek, Żurek, Žurek, Žůrek
Danish surname8 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Sweden, Iceland
Languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian
Also written Zürek, Żurek
Hindi surname5 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom
Languages: Hindi, Urdu
Also written Žůrek, Žurek, Żurek
a separate name5 spellings in the group
Also written Žurek, Żurek
Swahili surname2 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States
Also written Żurek
Russian surname8 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian
Also written Зурек, Żurek, Žurek, Žůrek

22 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

Teresa Román Vélezb. 1925COnot in their usual nameColombian writer and chef
Patrick James Zurekb. 1948USAmerican RC bishop
Milan Zurekb. 1966chess 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).

How to address them

FormalDear Zurek,

InformalHello,

Evidence

26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Zurek mean, and where does it come from?: Sour cereal soup (a type of sour rye soup, originating from Poland) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Zurek?: In Polish /zurɛk/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Zurek?: In Poland, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Zurek, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled żurek. After it come Germany, United States, Czechia and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Zurek most common?: Zurek is densest in Poland, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.9 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Zurek?: In Poland, the national register counted 13,076 people named Zurek in 2026, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
How common is Zurek compared with other names?: In Poland, Zurek is the 218th most common surname of 240,840 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Zurek?

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/zurek

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 2026-10-13 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, “Zurek” — ranked 265th in Poland (dane.gov.pl, 2026). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Zurek parses inside a full name →