Dirk

given name · German · Latin script

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

Dirk is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is the 46th most common given name. It appears chiefly in German and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Dutch short form of Dietrich; Germanic ‘people’ + ‘power’.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 241◐
  • DEGermany1 in 306
  • BEBelgium1 in 696

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

≈83K ●

across 8 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
340 ●

564K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 241 ◐

Netherlands

Spellings & scripts●

DirkLatin · German●448K records
디르크Hangul · Korean●0 records

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●

Dutch short form of Dietrich; Germanic ‘people’ + ‘power’

Sources 1

  • Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dirk is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#46396,975341K rec.—2Dirk280
NL Netherlands#4371,748△18K rec.1 in 24172KDirk151
BE Belgium#4222,26917K rec.——Dirk144
ZA South Africa#24312,85412K rec.——Dirk76
US United States—10,005131K rec.1 in 33K10KDirk340
GB United Kingdom—7,0506.1K rec.—listedDirk93
AU Australia—6,2065.6K rec.—3Dirk142
FR France—3,9792.8K rec.——Dirk199
CA Canada—2,9074.1K rec.—1Dirk76
CH Switzerland#3242,0021.4K rec.——Dirk81
NZ New Zealand#2911,2881.4K rec.——Dirk34
AT Austria—1,150584 rec.—18Dirk78

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

Languages●

  • German448K48%
  • English185K20%
  • Dutch118K13%
  • Western Frisian117K13%
  • Spanish8.6K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
German447,94448%
English184,94420%
Dutch117,94313%
Western Frisian117,24813%
Spanish8,6091%

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◐

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

  • Polish given name5.1K records spelled Dirk28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Netherlands, United States, Belgium

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Дирк, Дірк, Dierk, Dirck, Dirka

  • English surname792 records spelled Dirk39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia

    Languages: English, Thai, Chinese

    Also written Drake, เดิร์ก, เดิร์ค, Derik, เดริค

60 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●

Dirk 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 English, Dutch/Flemish, ruler of the people; see Theodoric.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • In German, a male given name from Low German, variant of Dietrich, equivalent to English Derek

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

  • In English, A long Scottish dagger with a straight blade.

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

  • In Dutch, a diminutive of the male given name Diederik

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

  • In English, Field, ballpark, Austin, TX

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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●

0200400600192019401960198020002020438 · 1954

Show as table
Dirk in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1918–2025
Yearrecords
19186
19216
19235
19247
192512
192612
19275
19289
192915
193013
193117
193223
193318
193415
193519
193616
193720
193819
193928
194020
19418
194231
194332
194432
194533
194636
194752
194847
194978
195094
1951101
1952109
1953150
1954438
1955377
1956365
1957369
1958314
1959371
1960363
1961379
1962314
1963336
1964333
1965302
1966298
1967312
1968330
1969343
1970342
1971277
1972164
1973159
1974180
1975159
1976122
1977115
1978102
1979176
1980148
1981121
198297
1983128
1984122
1985112
1986106
1987100
1988115
1989107
199082
199176
199267
199367
199457
199549
199660
199732
199845
199946
200044
200133
200225
200347
200427
200550
200646
200743
200842
200938
201027
201140
201227
201326
201427
201525
201624
201734
201818
201931
202025
202119
202219
202320
202412
202521

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 105 years between 1918–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Dirk Jan de Geer, b. 1870Dirk Bogarde, b. 1921Dirk Benedict, b. 1945Dick Advocaat, b. 1947Dirk Kempthorne, b. 1951Dirk Blocker, b. 1957Danny Blind, b. 1961Dirk Nowitzki, b. 1978Dirk Kuijt, b. 1980Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, b. 1983

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 65 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Dirk
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—72K#30
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—45K#43
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202010K#2,460
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020573#41,034
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—558#2,338
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010548#40,016
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000513#40,203
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—506#2,068
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—344#3,576
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—323#6,258
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—304#2,993
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026287#1,019

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 · 357 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dirk?
We estimate roughly 83 thousand people bear Dirk (counting its spellings and scripts) across 8 countries in our records.
In which country does Dirk have the most bearers?
Dirk is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled dirk.
Where is Dirk most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dirk is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 241 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is Dirk compared with other names?
In Germany, Dirk is the 46th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
Is Dirk a male or female name?
Dirk is a male 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 Dirk mean?
Recorded meaning: Dutch short form of Dietrich; Germanic ‘people’ + ‘power’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dirk

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, “Dirk” — the 46th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dirk parses inside a full name →