Yakov
Just 85 men in Poland carry Yakov, and no boys have received it in recent years: most people here have never met one. It's a Hebrew name, from a root meaning "supplanter" or "one who takes the heel".
Yakov Pronunciation
What Yakov means
Where Yakov comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Yakov comes from the Hebrew Ya'akov, the name the Book of Genesis gives to the child who took hold of his twin Esau's heel while both were being born. From that grip come the two glosses carried ever since, supplanter and heel-holder. Polish renders the idea as "ten, który zastępuje", the one who steps into another's place.
The spelling Yakov belongs to Russian and to Jewish families across Eastern Europe. Where a Polish parish clerk wrote Jakub, a Russian register wrote Yakov, and one man could answer to both. The comedian Yakov Smirnoff, born in Odessa, carried the form onto American stages in the 1980s and turned it into a joke about arriving somewhere new.
The meaning has an edge. A supplanter displaces someone, and the biblical Jacob did go on to take his brother's birthright. To hold a heel is to grab the part that comes last and still get out in front. The Hebrew Ya'akov keeps that heel in a single word.
How many people are named Yakov
1 in 251132 men in Poland is named Yakov. 85 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #3851 among male names.
Yakov as a middle name
Yakov is a first name for 85 men in Poland and a middle name for another 35, a 71/29 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1398th, between Walid (35) and Albrecht (34).
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#1396 Waclaw35
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#1397 Walid35
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#1398 Yakov35
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#1399 Albrecht34
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#1400 Andrii34