Knoll
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) Person living at a hilltop or from places named from Old English cnoll ‘hilltop’; (ii) from a medieval nickname for a short fat person
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Knoll is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 4.9K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 5.5K
- CACanada≈1 in 32K
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)
- Sources
- 374 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈15,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
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)
(i) Person living at a hilltop or from places named from Old English cnoll ‘hilltop’; (ii) from a medieval nickname for a short fat person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Knoll is read(measured from records)
Knoll is one spelling over 2 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.
- English68%
(i) Person living at a hilltop or from places named from Old English cnoll ‘hilltop’; (ii) from a medieval nickname for a short fat person.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
'dweller at the top of a hill' (OE cnoll), as at Knole (Kent, Sussex) and Knowle (Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Warwickshire); first attested Robert de la Cnolle 1185 P (Devon)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
at the top of a hill, OE cnoll, or habitation name from one of the many places named with this word. Knopf Kochetov 3°2 2. from an OE byname of the same origin, denoting a short, stout person. Vars. (of i): Knowl(d)er, Knowlman.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- German19%
from German knoll 'lump, bump'; also 'hilltop'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
Knoll 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 | #365 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | listed | Knoll | 172 |
| US United States | — | 9,608 | 1 in 35K | 9.6K | Knoll | 374 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Knoll | 6 |
| AT Austria | #276 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Knoll | 82 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 50K | listed | Knoll | 67 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 32K | 1 | Knoll | 104 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 257 | 1 in 33K | 257 | Knoll | 29 |
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-5 register; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; 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)
Knoll is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
topographic name for someone living near a hilltop or mountain peak, from Middle English knolle ‘hilltop’, ‘hillock’ (Old English cnoll). Middle High German knol ‘peak’. In some cases the English name is habitational, from one of the many places named with this word, for example Knole in Kent or Knowle in Dorset, West Midlands, etc.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
nickname for a peasant or a crude clumsy person, from Middle High German knolle ‘lump’, ‘clod’, German Knolle.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Fritz Knollb. 1883ATAustrian botanist (1883-1981)
- Max Knollb. 1897DEGerman engineer (1897-1969)
- Florence Knollb. 1917USAmerican architect (1917-2019)
- Catherine Baker Knollb. 1930USPennsylvania politician
- Andrew Knollb. 1951USAmerican paleontologist and Professor at Harvard University
- Gertraud Knollb. 1958ATAustrian politician
- Thomas Knollb. 1960USAmerican software engineer
- John Knollb. 1962USAmerican computer graphics professional
- Andi Knollb. 1972ATAustrian radio and television presenter
- Xenia Knollb. 1992CHSwiss tennis 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 34 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.6K | #3,697 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.4K | #3,473 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.2K | #3,765 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 257 | #5,056 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 5 | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Knoll mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Person living at a hilltop or from places named from Old English cnoll ‘hilltop’; (ii) from a medieval nickname for a short fat person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Knoll?
- In the etymology graph, Knolle is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Knoll have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 15 thousand people named Knoll in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled knoll.
- How common is the name Knoll?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,608 people named Knoll in 2010, about 1 in 35 thousand residents.
- How common is Knoll compared with other names?
- In Germany, Knoll is the 365th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Knoll?
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/knollThe 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, “Knoll” — the 365th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.