Kock

surname · English · Latin script

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

Kock is a surname, most frequently recorded in South Africa. In Aruba it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Bavarian variant of Keck, a nickname from Alemannic kech ‘lively’, ‘bold’.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa1 in 2.3K◐
  • DKDenmark1 in 6.3K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 9.4K

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

≈6.4K ●

across 14 countries

Sources
189 ●

39K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 6.3K ◐

Denmark

Meaning & origin●

Bavarian variant of Keck, a nickname from Alemannic kech ‘lively’, ‘bold’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Kock is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#17012,89012K rec.——Kock102
DE Germany#86610,96010K rec.—listedKock130
NL Netherlands#4641,8462K rec.1 in 9.4K1.8KKock71
BR Brazil—1,362△309 rec.1 in 155K1.4KKock65
AU Australia—993948 rec.——Kock58
DK Denmark#403929475 rec.1 in 6.3K929Kock82
US United States—8818.1K rec.1 in 378K1.1KKock189
GB United Kingdom—633564 rec.——Kock58
MY Malaysia—541482 rec.——Kock22
FI Finland—528△90 rec.1 in 11K528Kock15
SE Sweden—518347 rec.1 in 20K518Kock36
CA Canada—278303 rec.——Kock38

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

Languages●

  • English19K31%
  • German14K23%
  • Dutch5.6K9%
  • Danish3.6K6%
  • Portuguese2.5K4%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English18,62731%
German13,58723%
Dutch5,5949%
Danish3,5916%
Portuguese2,5094%

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◐

Kock is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Malay surname1.6K records spelled Kock4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa, United States

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Köck

  • a separate surname961 records spelled Kock2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, Netherlands, Belgium

    Also written Köck

  • Polish surname176 records spelled Kock2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Netherlands, South Africa, United States

    Also written Köck

  • Czech surname173 records spelled Kock4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, South Africa, Slovakia, United States

    Languages: Czech, Slovak

    Also written Köck

41 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●

Kock 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.

  • occupational name for a cook. Middle Dutch, Middle Low German kok.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In German, Berufsname zu mhd. koch, mnd. kok ‘Küchenmeister, Koch’; zeigt ch/(c)k-Varianz in Familiennamen. 3.484+344 Token.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, Variante zu Koch; Nebenkarte zu gutturaler Konsonantenvarianz Koch/Kock; 5500 Belege.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In Swedish, a chef, a cook (person who prepares food for a living)

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

  • In Polish, Kock (a town in Lublin Voivodeship, Poland)

    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●

02040601900192019401960198056 · 1981

Show as table
Kock in INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000), France, 1891–1991
Yearrecords
189112
190116
191110
192120
193118
194127
195142
196151
197140
198156
199142

FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1400160018002000Reimar Kock, b. 1500Hendrik Merkus de Kock, b. 1779Henri de Kock, b. 1819Axel Kock, b. 1851Johan Kock, b. 1861Karin Kock-Lindberg, b. 1891Rudolf Kock, b. 1901Manfred Kock, b. 1936Ulla Kock am Brink, b. 1961Quinton de Kock, b. 1992

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 30 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Kock
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.8K#713
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.4K#6,949
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.1K#21,406
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—929#429
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020881#28,736
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010881#27,392
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—528#6,547
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—518#1,823
FI FinlandDVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register)—194—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—56#24,366
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)198156—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)196151—

Reference works 4

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

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kock?
We estimate roughly 6.4 thousand people bear Kock (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
In which country does Kock have the most bearers?
Kock is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled kock.
How common is Kock compared with other names?
In South Africa, Kock is the 170th most common surname of 302,267 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Kock mean?
Recorded meaning: Bavarian variant of Keck, a nickname from Alemannic kech ‘lively’, ‘bold’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kock

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, “Kock” — the 170th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kock parses inside a full name →