Bunk
loc · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
Bunk is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Sense of sleeping berth possibly from Scottish English bunker (“seat, bench”), origin is uncertain but possibly Scandinavian. Compare Old Swedish bunke (“boards used to protect the cargo of a ship”).
- DEGermany≈1 in 27K(inferred from the name graph)
- DKDenmark1 in 36K
- NLNetherlands1 in 37K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 193 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 27K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Buenk in US United States, NL Netherlands, AU Australia and Bünk in DE Germany.
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)Sense of sleeping berth possibly from Scottish English bunker (“seat, bench”), origin is uncertain but possibly Scandinavian. Compare Old Swedish bunke (“boards used to protect the cargo of a ship”). See also boarding, flooring and compare bunch.
Cited for this meaning 1
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Bunk 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Bünk | 107 |
| US United States | 752 | 1 in 442K | 841 | Buenk | 193 |
| NL Netherlands | 468 | 1 in 37K | 468 | Buenk | 26 |
| PL Poland | 173 | 1 in 221K | 87 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | 163 | 1 in 36K | 163 | — | 1 |
| AU Australia | ≈70 est. | ≈1 in 362K | — | Buenk | 22 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (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).
Other recorded senses
(measured from records)Bunk is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, One of a series of berths or beds placed in tiers.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In yol, A light blow from an animal's head.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nds (Germany), bone
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.
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Franz von Bunkb. 1805CZ(1805-1867)
- Bunk Johnsonb. 1879USAmerican musician (1879-1949)
- Gerard Bunkb. 1888DEDutch composer, pianist, and organist (1888-1958)
- Bunk Adamsb. 1939USAmerican basketball player (1939-)
- Tom Bunkb. 1945UScartoonist
- Holger Bunkb. 1954DEGerman painter (born 1954)
- Carsten Bunkb. 1960DEEast German rower
- Leo Bunkb. 1962DEGerman association football player
- Katharina Bunkb. 1991DEGerman biologist
- Oliver BunkCHresearcher
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
(measured from records)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 841 | #29,833 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 823 | #27,562 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 752 | #30,916 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 468 | #4,160 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 163 | #3,219 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 87 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 87 | #33,409 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 86 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 86 | #33,243 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Bunk mean, and where does it come from?
- Sense of sleeping berth possibly from Scottish English bunker (“seat, bench”), origin is uncertain but possibly Scandinavian. Compare Old Swedish bunke (“boards used to protect the cargo of a ship”). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Bunk have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.0 thousand people named Bunk in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bünk.
- How common is the name Bunk?
- In the United States, the national register counted 752 people named Bunk in 2010, about 1 in 442 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bunk?
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/bunkThe 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, “Bunk”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.