Köpke
surname · Latin script
Meaning: diminutive of Jakob/Jacob or a related short form
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries
/kœpkə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Köpke is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 25K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 107Kas Koepke
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 186Kas Koepke
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 Köpke 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
- 262 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 25K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,200 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 Koepke in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CD Congo - Kinshasa and 1 more and Kopke in BR Brazil, BZ Belize.
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)diminutive of Jakob/Jacob or a related short form
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Köpke 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 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Köpke | 108 |
| US United States | 3,106as Koepke | 1 in 107K | 3.1K | Koepke | 262 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Koepke | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 700 | 1 in 302K | 700 | Kopke | 3 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈350 est. | ≈1 in 186K | — | Koepke | 22 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | ≈330 est. | ≈1 in 103K | — | Koepke | 1 |
| BZ Belize | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Kopke | 1 |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)Köpke is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Diminutiv-/Hypokoristikbildung zu Kopp als Kurzform von Jakob; 16 Types/3474 Tokens. Morphologisch belegt durch -ke, -chen, -ge sowie Schreibvarianten.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In German, k-Suffix vs. l-Suffix; zeigt Variantenbildung zwischen -ke und -el.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In German, from Jakobchen or 'little head'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, 2772 Bearer; slaw. Patronym mit Suffix -ke, morpholog. Varianten von der Stammform mit Umlaut/oe und Konsonantengemination.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In German, -ke-Suffix in Patronymen slawischer Herkunft; regionale Namensvariante.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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)- Georg Gustav Samuel Köpkeb. 1773DEGerman classical philologist and high school teacher
- Friedrich Karl Köpkeb. 1785DEGerman philologist of Germanic studies
- Rudolf Köpkeb. 1813DEGerman historian (1813–1870)
- Fritz Köpkeb. 1902DEGerman athletics competitor (1902-1991)
- Karl Köpkeb. 1926DEGerman politician
- Jörg Köpkeb. 1941DEGerman military personnel
- Christiane Knetschb. 1956DEnot in their usual nameEast German rower
- Andreas Köpkeb. 1962DEGerman footballer
- Elena Lewuschkinab. 1984UZnot in their usual nameGerman chess player
- Pascal Köpkeb. 1995DEGerman footballer
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)Evidence
(measured from records)10 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Köpke mean, and where does it come from?
- diminutive of Jakob/Jacob or a related short form Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Köpke?
- A machine transcription gives /kœpkə/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Köpke have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 thousand people named Köpke in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled köpke.
- How common is the name Köpke?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 700 people named Köpke, about 1 in 302 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Köpke?
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%B6pkeThe 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, “Köpke”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.