Kléin
surname · Latin script
Kléin is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 16th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle High German klein, kleine, from Old High German kleini, from Proto-West Germanic *klaini, from Proto-Germanic *klainiz (“shining, fine, splendid, tender”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleh₁y.
- DEGermany≈1 in 650(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 1.8K
- HUHungary≈1 in 2K
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 Kléin itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- #644 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 546 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 653 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
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)Locally spelled Klein in US United States, DE Germany, GB United Kingdom and 4 more.
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)- Middle High Germanklein(measured from records)
- Old High Germankleini(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*klaini(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*klainiz“shining“shining, fine, splendid, tender”(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*gleh₁y-“to cleave“to cleave, stick”(measured from records)
From Middle High German klein, kleine, from Old High German kleini, from Proto-West Germanic *klaini, from Proto-Germanic *klainiz (“shining, fine, splendid, tender”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleh₁y- (“to cleave, stick”). Cognate with Dutch klein and English clean. Doublet of clean. For a similar semantic development, cf. zierlich (orig. "decorative", today "petite").
Cited for this meaning 9
- A dictionary of surnames
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Kléin 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 | #16 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 653 | listed | Klein | 283 |
| US United States | #205 | 81,471 | 1 in 4.1K | 81K | Klein | 546 |
| BR Brazil | — | 27,054 | 1 in 7.8K | 27K | — | 6 |
| FR France | — | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | 2.4K | — | 9 |
| GB United Kingdom | #389 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | listed | Klein | 195 |
| NL Netherlands | #46 | 7,932 | 1 in 2.2K | 7.9K | Klein | 134 |
| AT Austria | #62 | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Klein | 118 |
| HU Hungary | #185 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Klein | 81 |
| LU Luxembourg | #952 | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 780 | 2.4K | Klein | 38 |
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); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kléin mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle High German klein, kleine, from Old High German kleini, from Proto-West Germanic *klaini, from Proto-Germanic *klainiz (“shining, fine, splendid, tender”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleh₁y… Recorded by A dictionary of surnames and Dictionary of American Family Names and 7 other sources.
- In which country does Kléin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 123 thousand people named Kléin in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled klein.
- How common is the name Kléin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 81,471 people named Kléin in 2010, about 1 in 4.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Kléin compared with other names?
- In Germany, Kléin is the 16th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kléin?
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/kl%C3%A9inThe 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, “Kléin” — the 16th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.