Dreher
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: occupational name for a turner; related forms include Drechsler and Dreyer
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈdʁeːɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Dreher is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 29K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 44K
- USUnited States1 in 59K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 289 (measured from records)
- 1 in 29K (inferred from the name graph)
5,644 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)occupational name for a turner; related forms include Drechsler and Dreyer
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Dreher is read
(measured from records)Dreher 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.
- English60%
Italian beer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German21%
occupational name for a turner; related forms include Drechsler and Dreyer
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
turner, lathe operator
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Berufsname zu 'drehen' = Drechsler/Turner; 4201 Tokens, 2 Typen.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Berufsname: Drechsler/Turner; Belegzahl 4201.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- Portuguese7.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Dreher 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)Dreher 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 | 5,644 | 1 in 59K | 5.6K | Dreher | 289 |
| BR Brazil | 2,600 | 1 in 81K | 2.6K | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈770 est. | ≈1 in 90K | — | Dreher | 50 |
| CA Canada | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Dreher | 52 |
| FR France | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 231K | 38 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 292 | 1 in 29K | 292 | Dreher | 14 |
| UY Uruguay | 77 | 1 in 44K | 77 | — | — |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 77K | — | Dreher | 5 |
5,644 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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Dreher is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Croatian, glazb. austrijski narodni ples u tročetvrtinskom taktu, varijanta ländlera
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)- Anton Dreherb. 1810ATbrewer, Austrian member of Lower Austrian regional parliament, member of Austrian empire council, entrepreneur and inventor (1810-1863)
- Joseph Dreherb. 1884FRFrench athlete (1884–1941)
- Wilhelm Dreherb. 1892DEGerman politician (1892-1969)
- Carl Dreherb. 1896ATsound engineer (1896-1976)
- Peter Dreherb. 1932DEGerman artist (1932-2020)
- Bernd Dreherb. 1966DEGerman footballer
- Rod Dreherb. 1967USAmerican journalist
- Lachlan Dreherb. 1967AUfield hockey player
- Claudia Dreherb. 1971DEGerman long-distance runner
- Michael Dreherb. 1974DEGerman film director and screenwriter
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)28 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.6K | #6,074 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.5K | #5,736 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.5K | #6,028 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.6K | #3,866 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 292 | #4,470 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 77 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 51 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 49 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 48 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 47 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 42 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1891 | 42 | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Dreher mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name for a turner; related forms include Drechsler and Dreyer Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Dreher?
- It depends on the language: in German /ˈdʁeːɐ/ (Wiktionary); in Portuguese /dɾeeɾ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Dreher have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.6 thousand people named Dreher, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dreher.
- Where is Dreher most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Dreher is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 29 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Dreher?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,644 people named Dreher in 2010, about 1 in 59 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dreher?
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/dreherThe 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, “Dreher”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.