Wōlf
surname · Latin script
Wōlf is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 17th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Middle High German wolf, from Old High German wolf, from Proto-West Germanic *wulf, from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos.
- DEGermany≈1 in 659(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 1.1K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2K
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 Wōlf 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 535 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 659 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Wolf in US United States, DE Germany, GB United Kingdom and 2 more and וולף in IL Israel.
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)- Middle High Germanwolf(measured from records)
- Old High Germanwolf(measured from records)
- Proto-West Germanic*wulf(measured from records)
- Proto-Germanic*wulfaz(measured from records)
- Proto-Indo-European*wĺ̥kʷos(measured from records)
From Middle High German wolf, from Old High German wolf, from Proto-West Germanic *wulf, from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. Compare Dutch and English wolf, Danish ulv, Gothic 𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐍃 (wulfs).
Cited for this meaning 8
- A concise dictionary of first names
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
- Családnevek enciklopédiája
Attested across 31 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Wōlf 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 | #17 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 659 | listed | Wolf | 274 |
| US United States | #406 | 83,928as Wolfe | 1 in 4K | 84K | Wolf | 535 |
| GB United Kingdom | #699 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.3K | 3K | Wolf | 177 |
| AT Austria | #27 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 39 | Wolf | 149 |
| BR Brazil | — | 7,488as Wolff | 1 in 28K | 7.5K | — | 6 |
| CH Switzerland | #126 | 4,217 | 1 in 2K | 4.2K | Wolf | 94 |
| IL Israel | #858 | 3,384as וולף | 1 in 2.6K | 3.4K | וולף | 70 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 972 | — | 17 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es). 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).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Wōlf mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle High German wolf, from Old High German wolf, from Proto-West Germanic *wulf, from Proto-Germanic *wulfaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wĺ̥kʷos. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names and DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen and 6 other sources.
- In which country does Wōlf have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 122 thousand people named Wōlf in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wolf.
- How common is the name Wōlf?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 4,217 people named Wōlf in 2024, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Wōlf compared with other names?
- In Germany, Wōlf is the 17th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wōlf?
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%C5%8DlfThe 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, “Wōlf” — the 17th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.