Names of Czechia CZ

MVČR — living population register 2017 records Jiří as the commonest given name in the Czechia and Nováková as the commonest surname; the names that most distinguish the Czechia from the rest of the world are Marie, Martin and Petr.

Written in Czech.

Population
11M
Official registers
4
Name forms recorded
116K
ABuilt from 4 official registers, 115,847 name forms in our corpus, 8 cited works.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Czechia are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Czechia included.

How names work in Czechia

Names in Czechia follow one naming tradition. Its structure, its given-name and surname stock, how to address someone and what trips software up are set out on its own page.

The most common names in Czechia

Counts everyone resident in the country · authority tier 1
MVČR — living population register 2017 — 64,976 given names counted over residents.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Jiří592K—
2Jan588K1
3Petr544K3
4Jana530K4
5Marie521K5
6Josef423K7
7Pavel402K9
8Martin377K10
9Tomáš364K—
10Jaroslav346K13
11Eva305K6
12Miroslav296K15
13Hana292K2
14Anna270K—
15Michal247K8
16František246K—
17Lenka238K19
18Kateřina236K—
19Lucie224K20
20Jakub216K23

Where the two lists disagree

10 of MVČR — living population register 2017's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

MVČR — living population register 2017Across all recordsjiří: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. jiřínot rankedjan: 2 → 12. jan1petr: 3 → 33. petr3jana: 4 → 44. jana4marie: 5 → 55. marie5josef: 6 → 76. josef7pavel: 7 → 97. pavel9martin: 8 → 108. martin10tomáš: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. tomášnot rankedjaroslav: 10 → 1310. jaroslav13eva: 11 → 6 · ranks higher across all records11. eva6miroslav: 12 → 1512. miroslav15hana: 13 → 2 · ranks higher across all records13. hana2anna: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. annanot rankedmichal: 15 → 8 · ranks higher across all records15. michal8františek: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. františeknot rankedlenka: 17 → 1917. lenka19kateřina: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. kateřinanot rankedlucie: 19 → 2019. lucie20jakub: 20 → 2320. jakub23milan: 21 → 2221. milan22alena: 22 → 11 · ranks higher across all records22. alena11karel: 23 → 2123. karel21lukáš: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. lukášnot rankedpetra: 25 → 2525. petra25
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
MVČR — living population register 2017 on the left; every record we hold for Czechia on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Czechia

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Czechia holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

MarieJiriMartinPetrEvaJanaFrantisekLenkaLucieMiroslavJaroslavTomasPetraKarelOndrejMilanVaclavLadislavMartinaEliskaJarmilaAntoninMarketaMarcelaBarboraRadekJaroslavaDagmarJakubHanaZdenkaLukasPavelAdelaJirinaRuzenaJanNikolaMiloslavDanaAndreaPavlaNatalieIvetaLiborJaromirZuzanaBozenaMichalMatejTerezaVojtechJosefBlankaOlgaStanislavJiřinaGabrielaOldrichRadka
Sized by how much of the difference between Czechia's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Scripts & spelling

Jangiven name●
Hanagiven name●
Petrgiven name●
Janagiven name●
Mariegiven name●
The best-attested names in Czechia, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • MVČR — living population register 2017headline

    Ministerstvo vnitra ČR (Ministry of the Interior, Czech Republic). Counts: residents. given and surname. 285,216 forms.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-backfilled registry stub (2026-06-05); verify publisher/URL. 350,276 rows, name_types=['given', 'surname'], evidence=['count']. source note: living_population_register_2017

    Last verified 2026-06-05.

  • naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot

    Ministerstvo vnitra ČR (via nasejmena.cz). Counts: residents. given and surname. 3,947 forms.

    What we know about this register

    Auto-backfilled registry stub (2026-06-05); verify publisher/URL. 7,012 rows, name_types=['given', 'surname'], evidence=['count']. source note: mvcr_2016_snapshot

    Last verified 2026-06-05.

  • CZSO — 100 nejčetnějších dětských jmen (top 100 baby names 2024)2024

    Czech Statistical Office (CZSO / ČSÚ). Counts: not recorded. given. 678 forms. 2016–2024. Licence: Open data CZ.

    What we know about this register

    Top 100 baby names nationally for Czech Republic, 2024. Separate M/F sheets.

    Last verified 2026-05-09.

  • KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)not a population count

    KdeJsme.cz (front-end over Czech Interior Ministry / MVČR register). Counts: residents. given and surname. 28,241 forms.

    What we know about this register

    National bearer counts for given names (jmeno) and surnames (prijmeni) scraped from kdejsme.cz, a clean HTML front-end over the Czech Interior Ministry (MVČR) population register. Seeded from the 170,202-token CZ MARISA seed, each token queried as both surname and given (freq-desc), time-boxed first pass with full resume cache (raw/CZ/kdejsme_cache.jsonl recording positives and absent names). Evidence is national count; rank computed per name_type by descending count. Routed via Decodo datacenter proxy to avoid the site WAF's per-IP block.

    Last verified 2026-06-03.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Czechia?
Jiří, according to MVČR — living population register 2017, with 592,180 bearers recorded.
What is the most common surname in Czechia?
Nováková, according to MVČR — living population register 2017, with 34,759 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Czechia?
Because they count different people. MVČR — living population register 2017 counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Jiří. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jan. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Czechia”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/CZ (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from MVČR — living population register 2017.