Istvan
given name · Hungarian · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Istvan is a given name, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Hungarian and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from the personal name Istvan, Hungarian form of Steven.
- HUHungary1 in 44◐
- RORomania1 in 661
- SKSlovakia1 in 1.3K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈256K ●
- #642 ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 205 ●
- 1 in 44 ◐
across 10 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
78K records
Official registry-verified
Hungary
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Izwan in MY Malaysia, ID Indonesia, IN India and 1 more, István in SK Slovakia and อัสวานี in TH Thailand.
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●
from the personal name Istvan, Hungarian form of Steven.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU Hungary | #2 | 221,314△ | 32K rec. | 1 in 44 | 221K | Istvan | 205 |
| RO Romania | #28 | 32,234△ | 1.3K rec. | 1 in 661 | 32K | Istvan | 70 |
| MY Malaysia | #281 | 15,568 | 13K rec. | — | — | Izwan | 62 |
| DE Germany | — | 3,655 | 3.5K rec. | — | listed | Istvan | 108 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 3,153 | 2.3K rec. | — | — | Istvan | 97 |
| SK Slovakia | #186 | 1,946 | 18 rec. | — | — | István | 25 |
| TH Thailand | — | 1,140 | 831 rec. | — | #803,087 | อัสวานี | 32 |
| AU Australia | — | 1,103 | 1.1K rec. | — | 1 | Istvan | 65 |
| US United States | — | 1,078 | 17K rec. | 1 in 309K | 1.1K | Istvan | 199 |
| SE Sweden | — | 733△ | 153 rec. | 1 in 14K | 733 | Istvan | 47 |
| CA Canada | — | 731 | 751 rec. | — | 5 | Istvan | 57 |
| AT Austria | — | 694 | 334 rec. | — | 28 | Istvan | 64 |
Roughly 221K people in Hungary bear this name (about 1 in 44). 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●
- Hungarian3.8M98%
- English73K2%
- German4.7K1%
- French2K1%
- Spanish1.9K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hungarian | 3,836,001 | 98% |
| English | 73,284 | 2% |
| German | 4,695 | 1% |
| French | 1,954 | 1% |
| Spanish | 1,886 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Istvan 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 Swedish, Istvan är en ungersk form av → Stefan.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Coronado
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 683 |
| 2000 | 664 |
| 2001 | 655 |
| 2002 | 637 |
| 2003 | 632 |
| 2004 | 616 |
| 2005 | 590 |
| 2006 | 592 |
| 2007 | 600 |
| 2008 | 617 |
| 2009 | 628 |
| 2010 | 620 |
| 2011 | 611 |
| 2012 | 611 |
| 2013 | 598 |
| 2014 | 596 |
| 2015 | 575 |
| 2016 | 572 |
| 2017 | 566 |
| 2018 | 559 |
| 2019 | 541 |
| 2020 | 519 |
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●
- Istvan Kulcsarb. 1936CHSwiss fencer
- Istvan Lisztesb. 1942NONorwegian sculptor and professor
- Oliver Botarb. 1957CAnot in their usual nameCanadian author and art historian, active in Winnipeg
- Istvan Antalb. 1958RORomanian ice hockey player (1958–2009)
- Istvan Szilb. 1961USHungarian artist
- Istvan Pelyb. 1974USAmerican video game designer
- Istvan Bakxb. 1986NLDutch footballer
- Bill Skarsgårdb. 1990SEnot in their usual nameSwedish actor (born 1990)
- István Lévaib. 1990HUSlovak wrestler
- Istvan Van HeuverzwynBEBelgian actor
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 53 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RO Romania | DEPABD — name-day population snapshot | 2023 | 32K | — |
| RO Romania | DEPABD — resident population names | 2023 | 32K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.1K | #11,725 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 733 | #2,114 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 519 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 438 | #2,750 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 301 | #65,782 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 298 | #70,715 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 274 | #67,317 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 202 | #8,966 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 192 | #4,309 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 142 | #4,231 |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 · 173 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Istvan?
- We estimate roughly 256 thousand people bear Istvan (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
- In which country does Istvan have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 221 thousand people bear Istvan in Hungary, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled istvan.
- Where is Istvan most common?
- Istvan is densest in Hungary, where the national register counts about 1 in 44 people carrying it.
- How common is Istvan compared with other names?
- In Hungary, Istvan is the 2nd most common given name of 18,750 given names recorded there.
- Is Istvan a male or female name?
- Istvan 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 Istvan mean?
- Recorded meaning: from the personal name Istvan, Hungarian form of Steven.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/istvanThe 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
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, “Istvan” — the 2nd most common given name in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.