Ruß
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from HROD stem; also from RUS or Rusch; later associated with soot 'Ruß'
/ʁuːs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ruß is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 35K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 20Kas Russ
- ATAustria≈1 in 58Kas Ruess
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 Ruß 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)
- Sources
- 175 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)
16,300 named Russ, 2010
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Ruess in US United States, AT Austria, PL Poland and 1 more.
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)
- HRODstem(measured from records)
- RUSor(measured from records)
from HROD stem; also from RUS or Rusch; later associated with soot 'Ruß'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ruß 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 | 16,300as Russ | 1 in 20K | 17K | Ruess | 175 |
| DE Germany | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 35K | listed | Ruß | 132 |
| PL Poland | 450as Russ | 1 in 85K | 240 | Ruess | 1 |
| BR Brazil | 169as Russ | 1 in 1.3M | 169 | — | — |
| AT Austria | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 58K | — | Ruess | 52 |
| CH Switzerland | 113as Russ | 1 in 74K | 113 | Ruess | 14 |
| NO Norway | 74as Russ | 1 in 74K | 74 | — | 7 |
16,300 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling russ. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Ruß is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, soot
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Karl Rußb. 1833PLornithologist, pharmacist and writer (1833–1899)
- Wolfgang Rußb. 1930DEGerman judge, Federal Court of Justice
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 6 sources across 2 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 10 | #60,931 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 7 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 7 | #169,037 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3 | #286,862 |
Reference works 3
- 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 Ruß mean, and where does it come from?
- from HROD stem; also from RUS or Rusch; later associated with soot 'Ruß' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Ruß?
- A machine transcription gives /ʁuːs/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Ruß have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 16 thousand people named Russ, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Ruß?
- In the United States, the national register counted 16,300 people named Russ in 2010, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ruß?
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/ru%C3%9FThe 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, “Ruß”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.