Unseld
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from mhd. unsaelde 'misfortune'; also 'tallow'
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Unseld is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- DEGermany
- USUnited States
- CHSwitzerland
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from mhd. unsaelde 'misfortune'; also 'tallow'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Where in the world
(measured from records)Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)Unseld 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.
In German, Deutet DuDen als Übername zu mhd. uns#lde 'Unglück, Unheil'; Bearer count 419.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, 1. mhd. unsaelde "Unheil" (Unsöld). 2. "Unschlitt". Un,| seit, slid, sieder. —• Unsin(n), Un- sorg: s. ohne 582
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)- Benjamin Carl Unseldb. 1843USAmerican gospel musician
- Albert Unseldb. 1879DEGerman architect and painter
- Anton Unseldb. 1894DEGerman association football player (1894-1932)
- Siegfried Unseldb. 1924DEGerman publisher (1924–2002)
- George Unseldb. 1943UScollege basketball player (1963–1964) Kansas
- Wes Unseldb. 1946USAmerican basketball player and coach (1946–2020)
- Joachim Unseldb. 1953DEGerman translator and publisher
- Wes Unseld Jr.b. 1975USAmerican basketball coach
- Saschka Unseldb. 1976DEGerman film director
- Ike UnseldUSbasketball 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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)13 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 255 | #75,564 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 238 | #84,785 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 238 | #75,466 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 43 | #20,892 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 9 | #154,387 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 4 | #114,020 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1 | #259,118 |
| DE Germany | Deutsche Namenkunde (Gottschald, 1982) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
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 Unseld mean, and where does it come from?
- from mhd. unsaelde 'misfortune'; also 'tallow' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Unseld have the most bearers?
- Unseld is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Unseld?
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/unseldThe 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, “Unseld”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.