Reuter
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From Middle High German riute ‘clearing’ or riutcere ‘mugger, highwayman’; also a Jewish name possibly from these German forms
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 21 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Reuter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 53rd most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- BEBelgium1 in 16K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 26K
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 Reuter itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 351 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 479 (inferred from the name graph)
≈33,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Luxembourg, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ruiter in NL Netherlands.
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)From Middle High German riute ‘clearing’ or riutcere ‘mugger, highwayman’; also a Jewish name possibly from these German forms.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Reuter is read
(measured from records)Reuter 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.
- English52%
From Middle High German riute ‘clearing’ or riutcere ‘mugger, highwayman’; also a Jewish name possibly from these German forms.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German32%
Toponymic surname from mhd. riute; in SE Bavaria mainly from entrunded place names Reit, i.e. a residence/settlement name. Bearer counts in the type: Reut(h)er 12006+1864, Reutter 1000, Roider(er) 320+10, Reuters 190, Reut(h)ner 89+18, Roit(h)ner 41+26, Roit(h)er 26+19, Reuder 20.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Toponymic surname from a place name or dwelling/landscape feature; atlas entry for the roden/reuten type.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
cavalryman
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Toponymischer Familienname: Herkunfts-/Wohnstättenname zu mhd. riute, frühnhd. reute 'Rodung'; auf -reuther/-reuter gebildet. Bearer count: 15629.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Aus mhd. reuter 'Reiter'; 15060 Bearer. Zeigt eu/ei-Variation mit Reuter(s) und Reu(th/tt)er.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
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)Reuter 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 | #138 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | listed | Reuter | 193 |
| US United States | — | 7,643 | 1 in 44K | 7.6K | Reuter | 351 |
| NL Netherlands | #53 | 4,915as Ruiter | 1 in 3.5K | 4.9K | Ruiter | 136 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 43K | 215 | Reuter | 58 |
| LU Luxembourg | #527 | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 479 | 2K | Reuter | 41 |
| BE Belgium | — | 754 | 1 in 16K | 754 | Reuter | 33 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 323 | 1 in 26K | 323 | Reuter | 34 |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)- Fritz Reuterb. 1810DELow German writer (1810-1874)
- Paul Reuterb. 1816DEGerman-Jewish-born British entrepreneur and news agency founder (1816–1899)
- Ludwig von Reuterb. 1869DEGerman admiral (1869–1943)
- Émile Reuterb. 1874LUPrime Minister of Luxembourg (1874-1973)
- Ernst Reuterb. 1889DEGerman mayor of West Berlin (1889–1953)
- Bjarne Reuterb. 1950DKDanish children's writer
- Suzanne Reuterb. 1952SESwedish actress
- Manuel Reuterb. 1961DEGerman racecar driver
- Stefan Reuterb. 1966DEGerman football executive and former player
- DJ Manianb. 1978DEnot in their usual nameGerman music producer, DJ, and label owner
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)39 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.6K | #4,644 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.5K | #4,400 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.4K | #4,662 |
| LU Luxembourg | Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 2K | #14 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 754 | #1,870 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 682 | #2,097 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 323 | #4,072 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 215 | #20,345 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 201 | #10,356 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Reuter mean, and where does it come from?
- From Middle High German riute ‘clearing’ or riutcere ‘mugger, highwayman’; also a Jewish name possibly from these German forms. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Reuter have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 33 thousand people named Reuter in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled reuter.
- How common is the name Reuter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,643 people named Reuter in 2010, about 1 in 44 thousand residents.
- How common is Reuter compared with other names?
- In Germany, Reuter is the 138th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Reuter?
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/reuterThe 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, “Reuter” — the 138th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.