Kovacs

surname · Hungarian · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Kovacs is a surname, most frequently recorded in Hungary, where it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in Hungarian and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: occupational name for a blacksmith, Hungarian kovacs, a loanword from Slavic.

rarermore common
  • HUHungary1 in 17◐
  • SISlovenia1 in 467
  • SKSlovakia1 in 611

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

≈29K ●

across 15 countries

#402 ●

of 21M surnames

Sources
269 ●

51K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 467 ◐

Slovenia

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Kovács in CH Switzerland, RS Serbia and Kovac in SI Slovenia.

Meaning & origin●

occupational name for a blacksmith, Hungarian kovacs, a loanword from Slavic.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Kovacs is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
HU Hungary#23,019,00424K rec.—203KKovacs206
US United States—9,07216K rec.1 in 37K9.1KKovacs269
HR Croatia—8,542—1 in 4958.5K——
SK Slovakia#96,175220 rec.—4.8KKovacs63
SI Slovenia#74,503△10 rec.1 in 4674.5KKovac5
RO Romania#613,4651K rec.——Kovacs66
CZ Czechia—3,285△165 rec.1 in 3.3K3.3KKovacs40
GB United Kingdom—2,5941.5K rec.——Kovacs102
CA Canada—983875 rec.——Kovacs84
ES Spain—593300 rec.1 in 84K593Kovacs44
BR Brazil—589—1 in 359K589——
CH Switzerland—545△152 rec.1 in 15K545Kovács56

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

Languages●

  • Hungarian3M96%
  • English82K3%
  • German8.9K1%
  • Spanish8.4K1%
  • Slovak5.3K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Hungarian3,007,73296%
English81,8473%
German8,9421%
Spanish8,4201%
Slovak5,2841%

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◐

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

  • English surname102K records spelled Kovacs12 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Kovács, Kovàcs, Kovãcs, Koväcs, Kovåcs

  • a separate surname3.5K records spelled Kovacs7 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Kovács, Kova̓cs, Kovaćs, Kovàcs, Kovāčs

  • Ukrainian surname830 records spelled Kovacs93 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Ukraine, Croatia, Russia, Serbia

    Languages: Ukrainian, Croatian, Russian

    Also written Ковач, Kovač, Kovac, Kovach, Kovać

  • Swahili surname479 records spelled Kovacs3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa

    Also written Kovács

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●

Kovacs is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Hungarian for ‘blacksmith’, from kovács ‘blacksmith’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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●

05010015019001920194019601980131 · 1961

Show as table
Kovacs in INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000), France, 1891–1991
Yearrecords
18911
19014
19112
192123
193149
194149
1951103
1961131
197172
198190
199182

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●

190019201940196019802000Miklós Kovács, b. 1911Pál Kovács, b. 1912Ernie Kovacs, b. 1919Ștefan Kovács, b. 1920László Kovács, b. 1933Angelica Bella, b. 1968Antal Kovács, b. 1972Ágnes Kovács, b. 1981István Kovács, b. 1984Dalma Kovács, b. 1985

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 31 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Kovacs
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020109.1K#3,917
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.8K#3,709
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208.7K#3,939
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—593#6,982
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—593#6,974
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—589#14,670
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—443#2,070
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—313—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024303#4,313
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—289#5,971
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—268#5,805
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008259#6,443

Reference works 5

  • 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)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 43 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kovacs?
We estimate roughly 29 thousand people bear Kovacs (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
In which country does Kovacs have the most bearers?
Kovacs is most frequently recorded in Hungary, where it is most often spelled kovacs.
How common is Kovacs compared with other names?
In Hungary, Kovacs is the 2nd most common surname of 83,469 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Kovacs mean?
Recorded meaning: occupational name for a blacksmith, Hungarian kovacs, a loanword from Slavic.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kovacs

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, “Kovacs” — the 2nd most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kovacs parses inside a full name →