Mayer
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) steward, bailiff or overseer; (ii) also Mayor or Meier from the Yiddish male personal name Meyer, from Hebrew Meir 'enlightenment'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈmeɪɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mayer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Austria it is the 13th most common surname.
- ATAustria≈1 in 722(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.1K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 486as Meyer
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 Mayer 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 473 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 722 (inferred from the name graph)
150,895 named Meyer, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, 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)
(i) steward, bailiff or overseer; (ii) also Mayor or Meier from the Yiddish male personal name Meyer, from Hebrew Meir 'enlightenment'
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Mayer is read(measured from records)
Mayer is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English58%
(i) steward, bailiff or overseer; (ii) also Mayor or Meier from the Yiddish male personal name Meyer, from Hebrew Meir 'enlightenment'
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Either from mayor, Middle English mair from Old French, or a form of Meyer.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from OFr maire ‘mayor’ or usually OFr/ME mire, meire ‘physician’; first attested William le Maier 1243 Ass Somerset
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
3. Jewish (Ashkenazic): variant of Meyer 2.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- German19%
Plate shows o/ö vowel variation in this surname type. Bearer counts: 892 and 94.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
a surname originating as an occupation, variant of Meyer
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish7.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Mayer in Spanish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mayer 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 | #693 | 150,895as Meyer | 1 in 2.2K | 151K | Mayer | 473 |
| DE Germany | #44 | ≈74,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Mayer | 231 |
| CH Switzerland | #269 | 17,305as Meyer | 1 in 486 | 17K | Mayer | 81 |
| AT Austria | #13 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 722 | — | Mayer | 145 |
| BR Brazil | — | 8,058as Meyer | 1 in 26K | 8.1K | — | 6 |
| AR Argentina | — | 4,259 | 1 in 11K | 4.3K | — | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 3,752as Meyer | 1 in 1.5K | 3.8K | — | 17 |
| DK Denmark | — | 3,020as Meyer | 1 in 1.9K | 3K | — | 1 |
150,895 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling meyer. 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); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Tobias Mayerb. 1723DEGerman astronomer
- Julius Robert von Mayerb. 1814DEGerman physicist (1814-1878)
- Louis B. Mayerb. 1884USCanadian-American film producer (1884–1957)
- Joseph Edward Mayerb. 1904USAmerican chemist (1904–1983)
- Maria Goeppert-Mayerb. 1906USGerman-born American theoretical physicist (1906-1972)
- Helene Mayerb. 1910DEGerman fencer (1910–1953)
- Michael Mayerb. 1960USAmerican actor and director
- Marissa Mayerb. 1975USAmerican business executive and engineer, former CEO of Yahoo!
- John Mayerb. 1977USAmerican musician (born 1977)
- Kévin Mayerb. 1992FRFrench decathlete (1992-)
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 71 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 40K | #880 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 39K | #803 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 38K | #911 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 4.3K | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.4K | #378 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 188 | #8,442 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 77 | #7,036 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Mayer mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) steward, bailiff or overseer; (ii) also Mayor or Meier from the Yiddish male personal name Meyer, from Hebrew Meir 'enlightenment' Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Mayer?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmeɪɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Mayer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 151 thousand people named Meyer, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Mayer?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 4,259 people named Mayer, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Mayer compared with other names?
- In the United States, Mayer is the 693rd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mayer?
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/mayerThe 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, “Mayer” — the 693rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.