Wüest

surname · Latin script

Meaning: from mhd. wuoste 'waste, desolate'; byname 'rough, ugly, wasteful'

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

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

Wüest is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 194K(measured from records)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 4.1Kas Wüst
  • DEGermany≈1 in 16Kas Wüst

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 Wüest 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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈5,800 people, est.

Sources
234 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 90K (inferred from the name graph)

Hungary, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Wuest in US United States, CH Switzerland, ID Indonesia and 3 more, Wüst in DE Germany and Wust in NL Netherlands.

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)

from mhd. wuoste 'waste, desolate'; byname 'rough, ugly, wasteful'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Wüest 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 Wüest is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈5,800 est.≈1 in 242K—Wuest4
DE Germany—≈5,000 est.≈1 in 16K—Wüst91
CH Switzerland#2812,051as Wüst1 in 4.1K2.1KWuest42
US United States—1,7131 in 194K1.7KWuest234
ID Indonesia—≈1,300 est.≈1 in 206K—Wuest2
NL Netherlands—155as Wüst1 in 111K155Wust15
HU Hungary—≈110 est.≈1 in 90K—Wuest1
NZ New Zealand—≈38 est.≈1 in 128K—Wuest4

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); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)

Wüest is also recorded as 8 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 Wűest, Wuest

  • Spanish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Argentina, United States, Spain, Peru

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Wuest

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, Switzerland

    Also written Wuest

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Switzerland, Italy

    Also written Wuest

  • Korean surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Korea, United States

    Also written Wuest

  • Turkish name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Wuest

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Switzerland

    Also written Wuest

  • Finnish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Switzerland

    Also written Wuest

1 further group 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

1700180019002000Heinrich Wüest, b. 1741Johann Jakob Wüest, b. 1761Friedrich Wüest, b. 1843Margrit Camenzind, b. 1939Alfred Wüest, b. 1956Dieter Wüest, b. 1960Sara Wüest, b. 1969

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 Wüest, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 6 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Wüest
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20241.3K#818

Reference works 1

  • 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

What does the name Wüest mean, and where does it come from?
from mhd. wuoste 'waste, desolate'; byname 'rough, ugly, wasteful' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Wüest?
A machine transcription gives /vyəst/ (IPA) for German.
In which country does Wüest have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 5.8 thousand people named Wüest in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wuest.
How common is the name Wüest?
In the United States, the national register counted 1,713 people named Wüest in 2010, about 1 in 194 thousand residents.
How common is Wüest compared with other names?
In Switzerland, Wüest is the 281st most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Wüest?

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

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, “Wüest” — the 281st most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Wüest parses inside a full name →