Anka

given name · Croatian · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Anka is a given name, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country, where it is the 41st most common given name. It appears chiefly in Croatian and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie.

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 245
  • RSSerbia1 in 2.1K
  • SISlovenia1 in 2.4K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈20K

across 8 countries

2

recorded for this name

Sources
112

80K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 245

Croatia

Spellings & scripts

AnkaLatin · Croatian125K records
АнкаCyrillic · Bulgarian3.6K records

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Анька in RU Russia, BY Belarus and Анка in MK North Macedonia, UA Ukraine.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 25 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Anka is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HR Croatia#4117,23162K rec.1 in 24517KAnka47
BG Bulgaria#2037,4993.2K rec.Anka46
DE Germany4,7114.5K rec.1Anka112
RU Russia3,470955 rec.listedАнька51
RS Serbia#2531,519694 rec.listedAnka30
SI Slovenia#40687235 rec.1 in 2.4K872Anka17
MK North Macedonia#4907613 rec.1 in 2.8K761Анка8
NG Nigeria557279 rec.Anka29
US United States4394.7K rec.1 in 758K439Anka98
AU Australia427480 rec.1Anka40
GB United Kingdom285267 rec.listedAnka43
AT Austria218125 rec.12Anka26

Roughly 17K people in Croatia bear this name (about 1 in 245). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages

  • Croatian125K80%
  • German5.3K3%
  • English4.3K3%
  • Bulgarian4.3K3%
  • Hindi4.1K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Croatian125,25880%
German5,2923%
English4,3443%
Bulgarian4,2653%
Hindi4,1183%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Anka is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish given name2.1K records spelled Anka3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Also written Ańka, Ânka

  • a separate given name1.4K records spelled Anka2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Slovenia, Serbia

    Also written Ânka

49 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.

Other recorded senses

Anka is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In French, Diminutif slave d’Anna; variante liée à Anne, donc « grâce ».

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In German, weibl. Vom., niederdeutsche oder pol­ nische (auch bulgarische, slowenische) Kose­ form von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In Russian, dim of Anna.

    as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)

  • In Latvian, rope used to fasten a sail to a mast

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In kea, hip (upper part of the leg)

    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.

Over time

05010015020002005201020152020128 · 1999

Show as table
Anka in SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023), Sweden, 1999–2020
Yearrecords
1999128
2000124
2001120
2002113
2003109
2004108
2005108
2006107
2007109
2008106
2009103
2010103
2011102
2012100
201397
201496
201596
201688
201786
201883
201983
202081

SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

18001850190019502000Anka Obrenović, b. 1821Anka Krizmanić, b. 1896Anka Bergman, b. 1917Anka Muhlstein, b. 1935Anka Khristolova, b. 1955Anka Bakova, b. 1957Anka Georgieva, b. 1959Anka Mrak Taritaš, b. 1959Anka Schmid, b. 1961Anka Feldhusen, b. 1966

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

Attested in 52 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Anka
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)202117K#47
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)202112K
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2008985#184
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2009971#185
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2010964#186
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2011959#191
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2012953#195
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2025872#222
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)861#435
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020439#21,612
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls274#14,249
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)212#3,465

Reference works 4

  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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 2026-09-12 data build · 279 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Anka?
We estimate roughly 20 thousand people bear Anka (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Anka have the most bearers?
We estimate about 17 thousand people bear Anka in Croatia, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled anka.
Where is Anka most common?
Anka is densest in Croatia, where the national register counts about 1 in 245 people carrying it.
How common is Anka compared with other names?
In Croatia, Anka is the 41st most common given name of 13,510 given names recorded there.
Is Anka a male or female name?
Anka is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Anka mean?
Recorded meaning: a diminutive of the female given name Ana, equivalent to English Annie
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/anka

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Anka” — the 41st most common given name in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Anka parses inside a full name →