Mass
surname · Latin script
Meaning: metonymic occupational name from German Mass ‘measure’, ‘measurement’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/mæs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mass is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 107K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 129K
- SGSingapore≈1 in 67K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 298 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 67K (inferred from the name graph)
2,588 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
metonymic occupational name from German Mass ‘measure’, ‘measurement’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mass 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 2,588 | 1 in 129K | 2.7K | Mass | 298 |
| BR Brazil | 1,388 | 1 in 153K | 1.4K | — | 2 |
| DE Germany | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 107K | — | Mass | 86 |
| FR France | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 113K | 19 | — | 2 |
| CA Canada | ≈460 est. | ≈1 in 83K | — | Mass | 66 |
| MY Malaysia | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 105K | — | Mass | 17 |
| SG Singapore | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 67K | — | Mass | 6 |
| EE Estonia | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 88K | 8 | Mass | 4 |
2,588 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)
Mass 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.
from a short form of the personal name Thomas. Compare Maas, Mas.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Matter, material.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Robert US poet laureate
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, Christian liturgy
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Swedish, pronunciation spelling of mars (“March”)
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Christoph Massb. 1508DEGerman physician, astronomer and astrologer
- Rubin Massb. 1894ILIsraeli publisher
- William Gibsonb. 1914USnot in their usual nameAmerican playwright and novelist (1914–2008)
- Jeffrey Massb. 1940UShistorian, Japanologist (1940–2001)
- Jochen Massb. 1946DEGerman racecar driver (1946–2025)
- Wayne Massb. 1946USAmerican football player (1946-2019)
- Cliff Massb. 1952USAmerican meteorologist
- John Massb. 1961MTbadminton player
- Wendy Massb. 1967USAmerican author of young adult and children's books
- Sarah Masshistorian
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)
Attested in 44 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,773 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.6K | #12,048 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,607 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.4K | #6,828 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 19 | — |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 17 | #6,696 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 16 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 13 | — |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 10 | #10,572 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Mass mean, and where does it come from?
- metonymic occupational name from German Mass ‘measure’, ‘measurement’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Mass?
- A machine transcription gives /mæs/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Mass have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.6 thousand people named Mass, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mass.
- How common is the name Mass?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,588 people named Mass in 2010, about 1 in 129 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mass?
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/massThe 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, “Mass”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.