Novak (in Serbo-Croatian and Slovene; Cyrillic: Новак), Novák (in Hungarian, Czech and Slovak), or Nowak (in Polish), is a surname and masculine given name, derived from the Slavic word for "new" (e.g. Polish: nowy, Czech: nový, Serbo-Croatian: nov / нов), which depending on the exact language and usage, translates as "novice", "new man", "newcomer", or "stranger". . It is pronounced almost the same way in most languages, with the stress on the first syllable. The main exceptions are Slovene, which places the stress on the last syllable and Hungarian, which stresses the "á".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novak