Rudi
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: a diminutive of the male given name Rudolf, equivalent to English Rudy
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as male
- Brazil (IBGE): listed as male
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes
- Norway (SSB): listed as male
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 41 countries · latest register: SURS, 2025
/rudi/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rudi is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium≈1 in 1.9K
- ATAustria≈1 in 2.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Rudi itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 228 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈51,000 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)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ruedi in CH Switzerland.
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)a diminutive of the male given name Rudolf, equivalent to English Rudy
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rudi is read
(measured from records)Rudi is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Indonesian40%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Rudi in Indonesian.
- German30%
- English8.0%
A diminutive of the male given name Rudolf, from German.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Teutonic; a famous wolf
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Spanish5.5%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Rudi in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Rudi 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 | #330 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Rudi | 162 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 7.3K | — | Rudi | 67 |
| BE Belgium | #368 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 19 | Rudi | 111 |
| AT Austria | #406 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | 40 | Rudi | 58 |
| BR Brazil | — | 3,026 | 1 in 70K | 3.8K | — | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | #322 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 163 | Ruedi | 83 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 722 | 1 in 2.9K | 722 | — | 17 |
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: Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SURS — resident population given names. 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)Rudi is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swahili, Kiswahili: 'to return'
as a nameAfrican Names
beauty; lustre; light; desire; zest; pleasure.
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
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)- Rudi Fehrb. 1911DEGerman-American film editor (1911-1999)
- Rudi Gernreichb. 1922USAmerican fashion designer and gay activist (1922-1985)
- Rudi Carrellb. 1934NLentertainer on Dutch and German television (1934–2006)
- Egon Krenzb. 1937DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician, communist leader of East Germany
- Rudi Dutschkeb. 1940DEGerman student activist (1940–1979)
- Rudi Dornbuschb. 1942USGerman economist (1942–2002)
- Peter R. Adamb. 1957DEnot in their usual nameGerman film editor (1957–2023)
- Rudi Völlerb. 1960DEGerman footballer and manager (born 1960)
- Rudi Garciab. 1964FRFrench football manager
- Sheraldo Beckerb. 1995NLnot in their usual nameSurinamese association football player (born 1995)
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)93 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 3.8K | #3,958 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.9K | #3,872 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 722 | #232 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 721 | #479 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 104 | #3,872 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 41 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 40 | #1,263 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — Najpogostejša imena in priimki (population register) | 2024 | 11 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Rudi mean, and where does it come from?
- a diminutive of the male given name Rudolf, equivalent to English Rudy Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Rudi?
- In the etymology graph, Rudy, Rudolph and Rolf are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Rudolf and Rodolf.
- How do you pronounce Rudi?
- A machine transcription gives /rudi/ (IPA) for Indonesian.
- Is Rudi a male or female name?
- Rudi is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as male; Brazil (IBGE): listed as male; United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed under both sexes; Norway (SSB): listed as male. We don't publish a percentage split.
- In which country does Rudi have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 51 thousand people named Rudi in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rudi.
- How common is the name Rudi?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 3,026 people named Rudi in 2022, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.
- How common is Rudi compared with other names?
- In Germany, Rudi is the 330th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rudi?
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/rudiThe 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, “Rudi” — the 330th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.