Bär
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from ahd. bero 'bear'; also an
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/beːɐ̯/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bär is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 7.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 20Kas Baer
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 27Kas Baer
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 Bär 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 407 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
16,587 named Baer, 2010
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Baer in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CH Switzerland and 2 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)
from ahd. bero 'bear'; also an. björn 'bear, hero, prince'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 32 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bär 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 16,587as Baer | 1 in 20K | 17K | Baer | 407 |
| DE Germany | #253 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | — | Bär | 148 |
| CH Switzerland | #459 | 2,572 | 1 in 3.3K | 2.6K | Baer | 63 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Baer | 91 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 63K | — | Baer | 13 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈440 est. | ≈1 in 20K | — | Bär | 33 |
| LY Libya | — | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Baer | 3 |
16,587 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Bär is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, from the Germanic stem *ber-/*bār-; often a short form in the BÄR/BAR group
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, from a nickname comparing a person to a bear
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, bear
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
In German, bear (animal)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Familienname zu Rufname Bernhard; Kurzform. Bearer count: 45 Tokens (PLZ 955 Neudrossenfeld), 101 (953 Kulmbach), 123 (954 Bayreuth), 37 (950 Hof), 41 (963 Kronach), 76 (793 Emmendingen).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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)
- Heinrich Bärb. 1913DEGerman Luftwaffe flying ace (1913–1957)
- Philippe Bärb. 1928NLCatholic bishop (1928–2025)
- Hans Bärb. 1939DEvictim of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Rainer Bärb. 1939DEGerman film director and screenwriter (1939–2022)
- Willi Baerb. 1951DEGerman film producer and journalist
- Dietmar Bärb. 1961DEGerman actor
- Simone Bärb. 1965DEGerman Casting Director (1965–2023)
- Dorothee Bärb. 1978DEGerman politician
- Carina Bärb. 1990DEGerman rower
- Marcel Bärb. 1992DEGerman association football player
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 16 sources across 11 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.6K | #339 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Bär come from?
- from ahd. bero 'bear'; also an. björn 'bear, hero, prince' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name Bär?
- In the etymology graph, Beer and Boar are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Bär?
- A machine transcription gives /beːɐ̯/ (IPA) for German.
- What does the name Bär mean?
- Recorded meaning: from ahd. bero 'bear'; also an.
- In which country does Bär have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Baer, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Bär most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bär is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bär?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 2,572 people named Bär in 2024, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Bär compared with other names?
- In Germany, Bär is the 253rd most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bär?
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/b%C3%A4rThe 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, “Bär” — the 253rd most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.