Link
loc · Latin script
Meaning: nickname for a left-handed person, from German, Dutch, or Yiddish
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Link is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in India.
- INIndia
- PKPakistan
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 423 (measured from records)
no count published
Highest-authority source
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nickname for a left-handed person, from German, Dutch, or Yiddish
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Link, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Link counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | 172 | Link | 17 |
| PK Pakistan | — | — | Link | 8 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | listed | Link | 147 |
| US United States | — | 22K | Link | 423 |
| CA Canada | — | 2 | Link | 108 |
| BR Brazil | — | 3.1K | — | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 422 | — | 27 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 369 | — | 35 |
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; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender. 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)
Link is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In the district of Under Rhine, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In German, from mhd. g(e)linc 'left'; also compares with Slavic Linko/Lyncke
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Personal characteristic: 'left/left-handed'; bearers 9319.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, trait surname: left-handed/left-sided; bearer count not printed on this line
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
nickname for a left-handed person, from Middle High German line, Dutch linker, links, Yiddish link ‘left (side)’. In Europe left-handed people were long regarded with suspicion as clumsy, awkward, deviant, and even untrustworthy.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Johann Heinrich Friedrich Linkb. 1767DEGerman naturalist and botanist
- Link Wrayb. 1929USAmerican guitarist (1929–2005)
- William Linkb. 1933USAmerican screenwriter and producer (1933–2020)
- Karl Linkb. 1942DEolympic cyclist
- Charlotte Linkb. 1963DEGerman writer
- Caroline Linkb. 1964DEGerman film director and screenwriter
- Kelly Linkb. 1969USAmerican writer
- Sören Linkb. 1976DEGerman politician (SPD), mayor of Duisburg
- John F. Linkb. 2000USAmerican film editor
- Pauline Linkb. 2002daughter of Caroline Link
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)
Attested in 58 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 22K | #1,627 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 22K | #1,534 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 21K | #1,676 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 3.1K | #3,309 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 422 | #4,730 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 369 | #3,562 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 172 | #19,689 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Link mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname for a left-handed person, from German, Dutch, or Yiddish Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Link have the most bearers?
- Link is most frequently recorded in India, where it is most often spelled link.
What do you want to know about Link?
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/linkThe 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, “Link”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.