Benno

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A nickname of the given name Benjamin

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

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

Benno is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CHSwitzerland≈1 in 7K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 15K

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)

≈16,000 people, est.

Sources
158 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 5.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

recorded in Italian

nome germanico; talora richiamato come forma affiancata a Bene/Beno.

Sources 1

  • Dizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

How Benno is read(measured from records)

Benno is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • German66%

    alter deutscher männl. Vom., ver­

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • English12%

    A nickname of the given name Benjamin.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Portuguese6.8%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Benno in Portuguese.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Benno 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 Benno is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#630≈16,000 est.≈1 in 5K15Benno158
CH Switzerland#528≈1,200 est.≈1 in 7K—Benno59
NL Netherlands—1,1811 in 15K1.2KBenno64
AT Austria—≈390 est.≈1 in 22K151Benno47
US United States—3411 in 975K341Benno133
EE Estonia—≈47 est.≈1 in 26K75—5

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: the de-munich-standesamt register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)

Benno is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Switzerland, United States, Netherlands

    Also written Bennon

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Bennó

  • Hindi given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

49 further groups 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Benno is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Italian, nome germanico; talora richiamato come forma affiancata a Bene/Beno.

    as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani

  • German: from a medieval short form of various compound Germanic names containing the first element bern bear. By the later Middle Ages it came to be considered and used as a short form of BENEDICT . St Benno (1010–1106) was a bishop of Meissen, who preached to the Wends in what is now East Germany. He is the patron saint of Munich.

    as a word

  • In Latvian, Cilvēka vārds

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

1850190019502000Benno Erdmann, b. 1851Hans Bernoulli, b. 1876Benno Vigny, b. 1889Benno Moiseiwitsch, b. 1890Benno von Arent, b. 1898Benno Sterzenbach, b. 1916Benno Ohnesorg, b. 1940Benno Möhlmann, b. 1954Benno Fürmann, b. 1972Benno Schmitz, b. 1994

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)

InformalHallo Benno,Hi Benno, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 55 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Benno
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—1.2K#948
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—776#2,438
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020341#27,021
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)2024151#713
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—75#793
DE GermanyStadt München Standesamt — Vornamenstatistik PDF (official publication)202415#121
DE GermanyStadt München Open Data — Vornamen von Nulljährigen202513—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20257—
DE GermanyStadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene20256#1
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present)20245#738
DE GermanyStadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene20205—
EE EstoniaSiseministeerium — population register name list 20232023——

Reference works 4

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

How common is the name Benno?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 1,181 people named Benno, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
How common is Benno compared with other names?
In Germany, Benno is the 630th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
How do you pronounce Benno?
A machine transcription gives /bəɛnɔ/ (IPA) for German.
What does the name Benno mean?
In English, A nickname of the given name Benjamin.
Is Benno a male or female name?
Benno is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Benno?
In the etymology graph, Bernard, Ben and Bernardo are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Benno have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 16 thousand people named Benno in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled benno.

What do you want to know about Benno?

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

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

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, “Benno” — the 630th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Benno parses inside a full name →