Völker

surname · Latin script

Meaning: nominative/accusative/genitive plural of Volk

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/fœlkɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Völker is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 100th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 457(inferred from the name graph)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 6.7K
  • USUnited States1 in 595K

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)

≈180,000 people, est.

Sources
260 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 457 (inferred from the name graph)

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 Volker in DE Germany, US United States, AT Austria and 3 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)

nominative/accusative/genitive plural of Volk

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Völker 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.

Where Völker is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#100≈180,000 est.≈1 in 457—Volker258
AT Austria#699≈1,300 est.≈1 in 6.7K82Volker90
CH Switzerland#744≈1,300 est.≈1 in 6.6K111Volker60
US United States—5591 in 595K2.5KVolker260
ZA South Africa—≈550 est.≈1 in 103K—Volker31
BE Belgium—≈330 est.≈1 in 35K8Volker29
NO Norway—≈97 est.≈1 in 56K160Völker15

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Völker is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Vôlker, Volker

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Switzerland

    Also written Volker

  • Danish given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland

    Languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian

    Also written Volker

  • Turkish given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, United States, Germany

    Also written Volker

  • Polish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine

    Also written Volker

22 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Völker is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, Patronym zu Rufnamen mit ahd. folc, altsächs. folk '(Kriegs-)Volk'. 5738 Belege. k/ck-Variation.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, Gutturaler Plosiv; Varianten mit Vö-/Voe- und -k/-ck- sowie Föl-Formen; 6648 Tokens, 11 Types.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

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)

1850190019502000Georg Völker, b. 1887Karl Völker, b. 1889Willy Völker, b. 1889Franz Völker, b. 1899Heinrich Völker, b. 1900Gerhard Völker, b. 1905Klaus-Dieter Völker, b. 1937Margret Völker, b. 1966Sabine Völker, b. 1973Sandra Völker, b. 1974

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)

FormalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Dear Völker, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 15 sources across 10 countries.

Official registers attesting Völker
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024111#10,152
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20088#79,895

Reference works 4

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 Völker mean, and where does it come from?
nominative/accusative/genitive plural of Volk Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Völker?
A machine transcription gives /fœlkɐ/ (IPA) for German.
In which country does Völker have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 175 thousand people named Völker in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled volker.
How common is the name Völker?
In the United States, the national register counted 559 people named Völker in 2020, about 1 in 595 thousand residents.
How common is Völker compared with other names?
In Germany, Völker is the 100th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Völker?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/v%C3%B6lker

The 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, “Völker” — the 100th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Völker parses inside a full name →