Wőlf

surname · Latin script

Wőlf is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. 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.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 4.8K(measured from records)
  • ARArgentina1 in 38K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 2K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

70,031 people, 2010

Record sources
278 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Wolf in US United States, AR Argentina, CH Switzerland and 1 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)
Derivation of Wőlf: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Wőlf
  1. Middle High Germanwolf(measured from records)
  2. Old High Germanwolf(measured from records)
  3. Proto-West Germanic*wulf(measured from records)
  4. Proto-Germanic*wulfaz(measured from records)
  5. 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 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

(measured from records)

Wőlf 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 Wőlf is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—70,0311 in 4.8K70KWolf191
CH Switzerland—4,2171 in 2K4.2KWolf38
PL Poland—2,8161 in 14K1.5K—1
CZ Czechia—1,4481 in 7.4K1.5K——
AR Argentina—1,1941 in 38K1.2KWolf72
DK Denmark—6941 in 8.5K694——
SI Slovenia—1951 in 11K195—1
BF Burkina Faso#433———Wolf4

70,031 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)

Wőlf is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Czechia, United States, Slovakia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Wolf, Wólf, Ŵolf, Wôlf, Wöĺf

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.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Wőlf under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Wőlf 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 Wőlf have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 70 thousand people named Wőlf, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wolf.
Where is Wőlf most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wőlf is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 2.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Wőlf?
In the United States, the national register counted 70,031 people named Wőlf in 2010, about 1 in 4.8 thousand residents.
How common is Wőlf compared with other names?
In Burkina Faso, Wőlf is the 433rd most common surname of 4,677 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Wőlf?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/w%C5%91lf

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, “Wőlf” — the 433rd most common surname in Burkina Faso. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Wőlf parses inside a full name →