Uwe
given name · Latin script
Meaning: North German: from a Nordic name meaning either ‘blade’ or ‘awe’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/uːvə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Uwe is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 30th most common given name.
- DEGermany≈1 in 223(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 3.6K
- ATAustria≈1 in 3.7K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 284 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 223 (inferred from the name graph)
≈360,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
North German: from a Nordic name meaning either ‘blade’ or ‘awe’. Vv
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Uwe 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 | #30 | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 223 | 3 | Uwe | 284 |
| CN China | — | ≈9,800 est. | ≈1 in 142K | — | Uwe | 15 |
| AT Austria | #454 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | 229 | Uwe | 102 |
| CH Switzerland | #403 | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Uwe | 66 |
| US United States | — | 937 | 1 in 355K | 937 | Uwe | 254 |
| BE Belgium | — | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 24K | 1 | Uwe | 29 |
| DK Denmark | — | 326 | 1 in 18K | 326 | — | 3 |
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: the de-leipzig-vornamen register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Uwe 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, a male given name, popular from the 1930s to the 1970s
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, ) Uve; Owe; Ove: männl. Vom., wahrscheinlich verselbstständigte friesische
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Low German and Frisian: equivalent form of OVE .
as a word
In mh, to board; ride; get on; embark; to mount; to rise, of dough
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In Dutch, non-attributive form of uw; yours
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)
- Uwe Friedrichsenb. 1934DEGerman actor (1934–2016)
- Uwe Seelerb. 1936DEGerman association football player (1936–2022)
- Uwe Neuhausb. 1959DEGerman footballer and manager
- Uwe Beinb. 1960DEGerman association football player
- Uwe Bohmb. 1962DEGerman actor (1962–2022)
- Uwe Rahnb. 1962DEGerman association football player
- Uwe Kampsb. 1964DEGerman football player
- Uwe Bollb. 1965DEGerman filmmaker (born 1965)
- Thomas Dollb. 1966DEnot in their usual nameGerman association football manager (born 1966)
- Uwe Röslerb. 1968DEGerman association football manager and former player
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 47 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 937 | #13,032 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 326 | #640 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2021 | 229 | #1,741 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1969 | 5 | — |
| DE Germany | Stadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene | 2025 | 3 | #3 |
| DE Germany | Stadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene | 2020 | 2 | — |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) | 2021 | 1 | #3,499 |
| DE Germany | DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen (2007) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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
- Where does the name Uwe come from?
- North German: from a Nordic name meaning either ‘blade’ or ‘awe’. Vv Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How do you pronounce Uwe?
- A machine transcription gives /uːvə/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Uwe have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 360 thousand people named Uwe in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled uwe.
- What does the name Uwe mean?
- Recorded meaning: North German: from a Nordic name meaning either ‘blade’ or ‘awe’.
- Is Uwe a male or female name?
- Uwe is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Uwe?
- In the etymology graph, Egon, Ove and Egil are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Uwe?
- In the United States, the national register counted 937 people named Uwe in 2020, about 1 in 355 thousand residents.
- How common is Uwe compared with other names?
- In Germany, Uwe is the 30th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Uwe?
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/uweThe 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, “Uwe” — the 30th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.