Fõrster
surname · Latin script
Fõrster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 99th most common surname. Recorded meaning: * As an English surname, from the noun forester. * Also as an English surname, borrowed from French fustrier (“blockmaker”), from fustre (“baulk of timber”).
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3.1K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 3.6K
- ATAustria≈1 in 7.1K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 392 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈22,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Forster in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 2 more and Förster in DE Germany.
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)
- Frenchfustrier“blockmaker”(measured from records)
- French rootfustre“baulk of timber”(measured from records)
- Old Frenchforcetier“cutter”(measured from records)
- Old French rootforcettes“scissors”(measured from records)
* As an English surname, from the noun forester. * Also as an English surname, borrowed from French fustrier (“blockmaker”), from fustre (“baulk of timber”). * As a French and Norman surname, from Old French forcetier (“cutter”), from forcettes (“scissors”). * As a German surname, spelling variant of Förster and Först (both related to Forst (“forest”)).
Sources 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fõrster 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 | #99 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | listed | Förster | 163 |
| US United States | — | 9,116 | 1 in 36K | 9.1K | Forster | 392 |
| GB United Kingdom | #578 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 8K | listed | Forster | 238 |
| AU Australia | #668 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Forster | 172 |
| CH Switzerland | #177 | 2,699 | 1 in 3.1K | 2.7K | Forster | 67 |
| AT Austria | #311 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | — | Forster | 76 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Fõrster mean, and where does it come from?
- * As an English surname, from the noun forester. * Also as an English surname, borrowed from French fustrier (“blockmaker”), from fustre (“baulk of timber”). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary and 2 other sources.
- In which country does Fõrster have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Fõrster in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled förster.
- Where is Fõrster most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fõrster is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.1 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Fõrster?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,116 people named Fõrster in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
- How common is Fõrster compared with other names?
- In Germany, Fõrster is the 99th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fõrster?
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/f%C3%B5rsterThe 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, “Fõrster” — the 99th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.