Kummer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German surname from a personal characteristic: from 'Kummer' = grief, worry; denoting a troubled person or one who causes concern
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkəmɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kummer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3.7K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 12K
- USUnited States1 in 20Kas Comer
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 Kummer 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 400 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)
16,893 named Comer, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Comer in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IE Ireland.
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)
German surname from a personal characteristic: from 'Kummer' = grief, worry; denoting a troubled person or one who causes concern.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kummer 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 | — | 16,893as Comer | 1 in 20K | 17K | Comer | 400 |
| DE Germany | #966 | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kummer | 140 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Kummer | 1 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈2,900 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Comer | 170 |
| CH Switzerland | #336 | 2,281 | 1 in 3.7K | 2.3K | Kummer | 73 |
| AT Austria | #504 | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Kummer | 65 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈280 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Comer | 54 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 21 | — | 5 |
16,893 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)
Kummer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, German surname from a personal characteristic: from mhd. kumber ‘Schutt, burden, grief’; also ‘judicial seizure/arrest’.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, From mhd. kumber/kummer ‘burden, grief, sorrow’; personal-characteristic surname. 2945+4 bearers.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, German surname from a personal characteristic: nickname for a worried, sorrowful person; bearer count 3249.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, grief, sorrow
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, t-Antritt-Form in der Variantenreihe Kummer/Kummert; -t-Erweiterung des Stammnamens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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)
- Kaspar Kummerb. 1795DEGerman composer, flutist and teacher (1795-1870)
- Friedrich August Kummerb. 1797DEGerman musician (1797–1879)
- Ernst Eduard Kummerb. 1810PLGerman mathematician (1810–1893)
- Paul Kummerb. 1834DEGerman botanist (1834-1912)
- Jay Sebringb. 1933USnot in their usual nameHair stylist and murder victim (1933-1969)
- Wolfgang Kummerb. 1935ATAustrian physicist (1935–2007)
- Tom Kummerb. 1961CHSwiss author and journalist
- Mario Kummerb. 1962DEEast German racing cyclist and team manager
- Dirk Kummerb. 1966DEGerman actor, film director and screenwriter
- Patrizia Kummerb. 1987CHSwiss snowboarder
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)
Attested in 32 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.4K | #9,679 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.9K | #10,554 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.8K | #10,582 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.3K | #400 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 21 | #5,370 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 17 | #6,521 |
| 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 Kummer mean, and where does it come from?
- German surname from a personal characteristic: from 'Kummer' = grief, worry; denoting a troubled person or one who causes concern. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- How do you pronounce Kummer?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkəmɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Kummer?
- In the etymology graph, Cumber is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Kummer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 17 thousand people named Comer, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kummer most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kummer is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.7 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kummer?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 2,281 people named Kummer in 2024, about 1 in 3.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Kummer compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Kummer is the 336th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kummer?
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/kummerThe 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, “Kummer” — the 336th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.