Wünsch
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname of place-name origin; usually from an ethnonymic Herkunftsname, possibly also from settlement names such as Wünsch/Wündsch/Wunsch(a)/Wünsch (Schlesien); bearer count 2201
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/vʏnʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wünsch is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 208K
- ATAustria≈1 in 16K
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
- 231 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 16K (inferred from the name graph)
≈5,100 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Wunsch in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria and 3 more and Wuensch in BR Brazil.
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)
Toponymic surname of place-name origin; usually from an ethnonymic Herkunftsname, possibly also from settlement names such as Wünsch/Wündsch/Wunsch(a)/Wünsch (Schlesien); bearer count 2201.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wünsch 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 | #705 | ≈5,100 est. | ≈1 in 16K | listed | Wunsch | 135 |
| US United States | — | 1,598 | 1 in 208K | 1.6K | Wunsch | 231 |
| ML Mali | #341 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Wunsch | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 751 | 1 in 282K | 751 | Wuensch | 19 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Wunsch | 36 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 149 | 1 in 23K | 149 | Wunsch | 9 |
| FI Finland | — | 81 | 1 in 69K | 81 | Wunsch | 4 |
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; the dfa-band-4 register; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Wünsch 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, Toponymic surname from a place/settlement name; bearers 2201.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In German, Toponymischer Familienname, kontrahierte Form zu windisch 'wendisch, slavisch'; auch gerundete Variante Wündisch. 4831 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
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)
- Christian Ernst Wünschb. 1744DEGerman mathematician and physicist (1744-1828)
- Carl Heinrich Wünschb. 1779DEGerman architect
- Josef Wünschb. 1842CZCzech traveller, cartographer and educator (1842–1907)
- Jan Nepomuk Wünschb. 1855CZCzech composer, choirmaster and organist (1855–1950)
- Richard Wünschb. 1869DEGerman classical philologist and religious studies scholar (1869–1915)
- Georg Wünschb. 1887DEGerman theologian (1887-1964)
- Erich Wünschb. 1923DEGerman chemist (1923-2013)
- Anna Wünschb. 1930ATAustrian children's writer
- Thomas Wünschb. 1962DEGerman medievalist
- Uwe Wünschb. 1963DEEast German cross-country skier
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 15 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 4 | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Wünsch mean, and where does it come from?
- Toponymic surname of place-name origin; usually from an ethnonymic Herkunftsname, possibly also from settlement names such as Wünsch/Wündsch/Wunsch(a)/Wünsch (Schlesien); bearer count 2201. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Wünsch?
- A machine transcription gives /vʏnʃ/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Wünsch have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 5.1 thousand people named Wünsch in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wunsch.
- How common is the name Wünsch?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,598 people named Wünsch in 2010, about 1 in 208 thousand residents.
- How common is Wünsch compared with other names?
- In Germany, Wünsch is the 705th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wünsch?
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/w%C3%BCnschThe 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, “Wünsch” — the 705th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.