WEiß
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. from place-names; 2
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
WEiß is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Austria it is the 24th most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.6K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 1.4Kas Weiss
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.9Kas Weiss
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 WEiß 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)
- Record sources
- 518 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
57,112 named Weiss, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Weiss in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AT Austria and 3 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)1. from place-names; 2. see Wizo; 3. from the color adjective 'white'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)WEiß 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 | #447 | 57,112as Weiss | 1 in 5.8K | 57K | Weiss | 518 |
| DE Germany | #29 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | listed | WEiß | 228 |
| FR France | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | 1.6K | WEiß | 10 |
| BR Brazil | — | 7,843as Weiss | 1 in 27K | 7.8K | — | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈7,200 est. | ≈1 in 9.1K | 1.2K | Weiss | 162 |
| AT Austria | #24 | ≈6,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Weiss | 127 |
| CH Switzerland | #135 | 4,361as Weiss | 1 in 1.9K | 4.4K | Weiss | 92 |
| HU Hungary | #287 | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Weiss | 37 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Weiss | 88 |
57,112 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)WEiß 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, trait surname: white/fair-haired or pale; bearer count not printed on this line
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Personal characteristic: white/blond hair or pale complexion; 58580 bearers.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, white
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
In German, zu mhd. weiß/wiß 'weiß, hell'; die Platte zeigt Dentale-Varianten (Plosive/Frikative) und zahlreiche Schreibvarianten, teils mit -gerber/-haupt/-kopf/-haar/-loch.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
In German, zu mhd. wîz 'weiß'; zeigt die Varianz s(ss)/ß/s im Inlaut. Belegzahlen: Weisse 203, Weiße 1068, Weise 5958, Weisser 1288, Weißer 1138, Weiser 2864.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
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)- Silvius Leopold Weissb. 1687DEGerman composer and lutenist
- Harry Houdinib. 1874USnot in their usual nameHungarian-born American illusionist, escapologist, and stunt performer (1874–1926)
- Peter Weissb. 1916DESwedish-German playwright and author (1916–1982)
- George David Weissb. 1921USAmerican songwriter and arranger; President of the Songwriters Guild of America (1921-2010)
- Rainer Weissb. 1932USAmerican physicist (1932–2025)
- Michael T. Weissb. 1962USAmerican actor
- D. B. Weissb. 1971USAmerican writer and producer
- Jonathan Taylor Thomasb. 1981USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
- Vladimir Weissb. 1989SKSlovak association football player (1989-)
- Gaia Weissb. 1991FRFrench actress and model
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)7 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 157 | #7,663 |
Reference works 2
- 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
- Where does the name WEiß come from?
- 1. from place-names; 2. see Wizo; 3. from the color adjective 'white' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name WEiß?
- In the etymology graph, Weiße is a form of the same name in other languages.
- What does the name WEiß mean?
- Recorded meaning: 1. from place-names; 2.
- In which country does WEiß have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 57 thousand people named Weiss, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name WEiß?
- In the United States, the national register counted 57,112 people named Weiss in 2010, about 1 in 5.8 thousand residents.
- How common is WEiß compared with other names?
- In the United States, WEiß is the 447th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about WEiß?
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/wei%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, “WEiß” — the 447th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.