Roark
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɹɔɹk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Roark is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Lancs. from Ó Ruairc, see O’Rourke . Further information: this name is rare in Britain but is thriving in the USA.
- USUnited States1 in 23K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 456K
- DKDenmark1 in 1.2M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 16 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
14,509 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
Main GB Location (1881): Lancs. from Ó Ruairc, see O’Rourke . Further information: this name is rare in Britain but is thriving in the USA.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
Where in the world(measured from records)
Roark 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 14,509 | 1 in 23K | 15K | Roark | 15 |
| AR Argentina | 29 | 1 in 1.6M | 29 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 12 | 1 in 456K | 12 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 5 | 1 in 2M | 5 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 5 | 1 in 1.2M | 5 | — | — |
14,509 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
- Charles W. Roarkb. 1887USAmerican politician (1887-1929)
- Garland Roarkb. 1904USAmerican writer
- Aidan Roarkb. 1905polo player (1905-1984)
- William Marshall Roarkb. 1928USDistinguished Flying Cross Recipient and Namesake of USS Roark (1928–1965)
- Terry P. Roarkb. 1938USAmerican academic
- James Roarkb. 1945USAmerican photographer
- Diane Roarkb. 1949USAmerican whistleblower
- Michelle Roarkb. 1974USAmerican freestyle skier
- Michael Roarkb. 1983USAmerican actor and attorney
- Tanner Roarkb. 1986USAmerican baseball pitcher
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)
Attested in 17 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,489 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,355 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,596 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 29 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 12 | #52,348 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5 | #56,466 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5 | #65,702 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Roark mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): Lancs. from Ó Ruairc, see O’Rourke . Further information: this name is rare in Britain but is thriving in the USA. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.
- How do you pronounce Roark?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɹɔɹk/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Roark have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Roark, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roark.
- Where is Roark most common?
- Roark is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 23 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Roark?
- In the United States, the national register counted 14,509 people named Roark in 2010, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Roark?
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/roarkThe 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, “Roark”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.