Foerster
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Foerster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 99th most common surname.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3.1Kas Forster(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 3.6Kas Förster
- ATAustria≈1 in 7.1Kas Forster
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 Foerster 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)
- Sources
- 392 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈22,000 named Förster, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Switzerland, as Forster
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Forster in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 2 more and Förster in DE Germany.
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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Foerster 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 | #99 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | listed | Förster | 163 |
| US United States | — | 9,116as Forster | 1 in 36K | 9.1K | Forster | 392 |
| GB United Kingdom | #578 | ≈8,300 est. | ≈1 in 8K | listed | Forster | 238 |
| AU Australia | #668 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.6K | — | Forster | 172 |
| CH Switzerland | #177 | 2,699as Forster | 1 in 3.1K | 2.7K | Forster | 67 |
| AT Austria | #311 | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | — | Forster | 76 |
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; the dfa-band-1 register; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Wilhelm Julius Foersterb. 1832DEGerman astronomer (1832–1921)
- Josef Bohuslav Foersterb. 1859CZCzech composer and educator (1859–1951)
- Viktor Foersterb. 1867CZCzech painter (1867-1915)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Foersterb. 1869DEGerman academic, philosopher, editor and pacifist (1869-1966)
- Otfrid Foersterb. 1873PLGerman neurologist (1873–1941)
- Heinz von Foersterb. 1911ATAustrian-American scientist and cybernetician (1911-2002)
- Paul Foersterb. 1963USsailor
- Dominique Gonzalez-Foersterb. 1965FRFrench artist (born 1965)
- Anna Foersterb. 1971USAmerican cinematographer and director
- Linda Foersterb. 1984DEGerman actress
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 24 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,312 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,678 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.5K | #11,914 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 48 | #19,268 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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
- In which country does Foerster have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Förster in Germany, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Foerster most common?
- No national register we hold counts the spelling Foerster itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Switzerland's: the national register counts about 1 in 3.1 thousand people named Forster.
- How common is the name Foerster?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,116 people named Forster in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
- How common is Foerster compared with other names?
- In Germany, Foerster is the 99th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Foerster?
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/foersterThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Foerster” — the 99th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.