Kovács
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a surname originating as an occupation for a smith; one of the most common surnames in Hungary
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈkovaːt͡ʃ/(recorded in a dictionary) Hungarian · from Wiktionary
Kovács is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Hungary than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname.
- HUHungary≈1 in 110(inferred from the name graph)
- SKSlovakia1 in 1.1K
- RORomania≈1 in 2.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Hungary (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 288 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 106 (inferred from the name graph)
≈90,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Hungary, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kovacs in HU Hungary, US United States, RO Romania and 1 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)a surname originating as an occupation for a smith; one of the most common surnames in Hungary.
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kovács is found
(measured from records)Kovács counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU Hungary | #3 | ≈90,000 est. | ≈1 in 106 | 203K | Kovacs | 221 |
| US United States | — | 9,072 | 1 in 37K | 9.1K | Kovacs | 288 |
| RO Romania | #73 | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Kovacs | 70 |
| SK Slovakia | #24 | 4,832 | 1 in 1.1K | 4.8K | Kovács | 64 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Kovacs | 93 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 545 | 1 in 15K | 545 | Kovács | 55 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Nyilvántartó — Top-100 birth surnames in population (2020–2025); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Ștefan Kovácsb. 1920RORomanian association football player (1920-1995)
- László Kovácsb. 1933HUHungarian-American cinematographer
- Dalma Kovácsb. 1985RORomanian singer
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kovács mean, and where does it come from?
- a surname originating as an occupation for a smith; one of the most common surnames in Hungary. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Kovács?
- In Hungarian /ˈkovaːt͡ʃ/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kovács?
- Mondonomo estimates about 90 thousand people named Kovács in Hungary, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kovacs. After it come United States, Romania, Slovakia and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kovács?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,072 people named Kovács in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
- How common is Kovács compared with other names?
- In Hungary, Kovács is the 3rd most common surname of 88,284 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kovács?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kov%C3%A1csThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
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, “Kovács” — the 3rd most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.