Greenstein
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Partly Americanized form of the Ashkenazic Jewish ornamental surname Gru(e)nstein, from German griin ‘green’ (Yiddish grin) + Stein ‘stone’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Greenstein is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Partly Americanized form of the Ashkenazic Jewish ornamental surname Gru(e)nstein, from German griin ‘green’ (Yiddish grin) + Stein ‘stone’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Greenstein counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 2.8K | — |
| NL Netherlands | — | 6 | — |
| PL Poland | — | 5 | — |
| BE Belgium | — | 2 | — |
| EE Estonia | — | listed | — |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); the ee-siseministeerium-registry 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Joe Greensteinb. 1893USAmerican strength athlete
- Jesse L. Greensteinb. 1909USAmerican astronomer (1909–2002)
- Fred Greensteinb. 1930USAmerican political scientist (1930–2018)
- Robert Greensteinb. 1946USAmerican government official
- Linda R. Greensteinb. 1950USNew Jersey State Senator
- Rosalind Greensteinb. 1950French anglicist
- Barry Greensteinb. 1954USAmerican poker player
- Scott Greensteinb. 1959USAmerican businessman
- Jonathan Greensteinb. 1967USAmerican antiques dealer
- Gary GreensteinUSAmerican periodontist
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 14 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,341 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,696 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.5K | #11,856 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 6 | #74,154 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5 | #197,626 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2 | — |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 2 | #139,187 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2 | #334,006 |
| EE Estonia | Siseministeerium — population register name list 2023 | 2023 | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
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 Greenstein mean, and where does it come from?
- Partly Americanized form of the Ashkenazic Jewish ornamental surname Gru(e)nstein, from German griin ‘green’ (Yiddish grin) + Stein ‘stone’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Greenstein have the most bearers?
- Greenstein is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Greenstein?
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/greensteinThe 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, “Greenstein”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.