Können
surname · Latin script
Meaning: to be able to, can (A Frequency Dictionary of German)
Können is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- USUnited States≈1 in 10Mfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 760Kfew records
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.7Mfew records
carrying the name, as Mondonomo estimates it from our sources: no national register counts it in these countries. Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Können 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
- 40 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 764K (inferred from the name graph)
≈48 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Konnen in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria and Koennen in NL Netherlands, AU Australia.
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)to be able to, can
Cited for this meaning 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Können is found
(measured from records)Können 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 | ≈48 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | — | Konnen | 20 |
| US United States | ≈34 est. | ≈1 in 10M | listed | Konnen | 40 |
| AT Austria | ≈12 est. | ≈1 in 764K | — | Konnen | 3 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 3.9M | — | Koennen | 3 |
| AU Australia | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 16M | — | Koennen | 5 |
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.
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)Können is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, to be able (to do or be something), to have the possibility of, can.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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.
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 Können mean, and where does it come from?
- to be able to, can Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of German.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Können?
- Mondonomo estimates about 48 people named Können in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled konnen. After it come United States, Austria, Netherlands and Australia; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Können?
- Mondonomo estimates about 48 people in Germany have Können as their first surname, about 1 in 1.7 million residents. No national register counts it there; the figure is ours, calibrated against the registers that do.
What do you want to know about Können?
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/k%C3%B6nnenThe 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, “Können”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.