A Slavic and Ashkenazic Jewish surname
meaning "new" (e.g., "Novy"), "Nov-ak" could also be a
play on "Nov akh" or "frutiful
brother" (Hebrew).
Bearers of the "Novak" surname include actress Kim Novak (who took "Novak" as her stagename), columnist and cancer victim Robert Novak, the psychotic astronaut and honorably-discharged Navy servicewoman Lisa Nowak, and Marysia "Maria" Novakova Rusnakova (1855-c. 1907) -- who was
married to Jakub Rusnak (a member of the late Kosice, Slovakia Jewish Rusnaks) and was the paternal grandmother of Sgt. and Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander Carl Stephen Rusnak (January 2, 1922 -
November 7, 1999; US Army, WW2, European Theater, honorably discharged after the war). By the way, Maria's relative Leopold Novak was an early victim of
the Holocaust in then-Czechoslovakian Zlata Idka: he was murdered in a then-Aranydka mine in 1936.