Zurek
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Sour cereal soup (a type of sour rye soup, originating from Poland)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈzʊɹɛk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zurek is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Poland than in any other country.
- PLPoland1 in 2.9K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 58K
- USUnited States1 in 231K
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
- 232 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
13,076 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:
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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Sour cereal soup (a type of sour rye soup, originating from Poland)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PL Poland | #218 | 13,076 | 1 in 2.9K | 6.6K | Żurek | 86 |
| CN China | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 323K | — | Zurek | 2 |
| US United States | — | 1,442 | 1 in 231K | 1.5K | Zurek | 232 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Zurek | 90 |
| CZ Czechia | #968 | 785 | 1 in 14K | 785 | Zurek | 32 |
| NO Norway | — | 64 | 1 in 85K | 64 | — | 3 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈51 est. | ≈1 in 102K | — | 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); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Maryan Žurekb. 1899DEGerman sculptor and painter (1899-1943)
- Teresa Román Vélezb. 1925COnot in their usual nameColombian writer and chef
- Peter Zurekb. 1943ATAustrian journalist
- Patrick James Zurekb. 1948USAmerican RC bishop
- Petr Žůrekb. 1951CZAssoc. Prof., mining engineer, CSc., university lecturer, work in the field of mining and its history
- Milan Zurekb. 1966chess player
- Jimmy Zurekb. 1971ATAustrian painter
- Maria Żurekb. 1990PLresearcher
- Teresa Zurekb. 1998DEGerman racewalker
- Kathryn M. ZurekUSAmerican physicist
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 26 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.5K | #17,660 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.4K | #18,843 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.4K | #18,928 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 76 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 76 | #37,321 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 64 | #22,011 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 44 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 44 | #54,762 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 7 | #100,699 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 7 | #19,418 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 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?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈzʊɹɛk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Zurek have the most bearers?
- 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.
- 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/zurekThe 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, “Zurek” — the 218th most common surname in Poland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.