Werner

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in German: From a Germanic personal name (e.g. Warinheri); 39,488 bearers. Plate shows e ~ ö vowel variation with Wörner

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/vɛʁnɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Werner is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 21st most common given name.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 170(inferred from the name graph)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 441
  • CHSwitzerland≈1 in 902

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 Werner 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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈470,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
460 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 170 (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

WernerLatin(measured from records)
วอรเนอรThai(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Wernér in SE Sweden.

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 the German male personal name Werner, literally ‘guard-army’

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

How Werner is read(measured from records)

Werner 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.

  • German83%

    From a Germanic personal name (e.g. Warinheri); 39,488 bearers. Plate shows e ~ ö vowel variation with Wörner.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

    a male given name, popular in Germany since the Middle Ages

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    Patronymischer Familienname zu dem Rufnamen Werner (< ahd. warin + hari 'Heer'); Vollform mit e-Variante. 6 Types/39,488 Tokens; ca. 8% gerundete Varianten insgesamt.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • English7.9%

    from the German male personal name Werner, literally ‘guard-army’

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

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)

Werner 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.

Where Werner is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#21≈470,000 est.≈1 in 170—Werner267
ZA South Africa#370≈23,000 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Werner94
AT Austria#76≈20,000 est.≈1 in 4411.1KWerner165
CH Switzerland#33≈9,300 est.≈1 in 9021.9KWerner126
BE Belgium#364≈5,700 est.≈1 in 2K447Werner96
SE Sweden—4,515as Verner1 in 2.3K4.5KWernér74
PL Poland#8981,8451 in 21K3.2KWerner2

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: Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Werner is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Switzerland, United States, South Africa

    Also written Wérnér, Wernér

  • Croatian given name20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia

    Languages: Croatian, Polish, Czech

    Also written Verner, Werner', Вернер, Ŵḝřňeř

  • French given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Switzerland, United States

    Also written Wëŕńëŕ, Wėrnēr

  • Danish given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, Norway, United States, Switzerland

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Wernér

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Wernér

77 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Werner 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.

  • Name of German origin, existing in Baden 1809.

    as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History

  • In French, Germanic name from warin ‘protect’ + heri ‘army’.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

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)

18001850190019502000Werner von Siemens, b. 1816Werner Sombart, b. 1863Werner Jaeger, b. 1888Werner Heisenberg, b. 1901Werner Arber, b. 1929Sigmund Jähn, b. 1937Werner Herzog, b. 1942Rainer Werner Fassbinder, b. 1945Klaus Johannis, b. 1959Werner Faymann, b. 1960
  • Werner von Siemensb. 1816DEGerman electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist (1816–1892)
  • Werner Sombartb. 1863DEGerman economist, sociologist, historian (1863-1941)
  • Werner Jaegerb. 1888DEGerman-American classical philologist (1888-1961)
  • Werner Heisenbergb. 1901DEGerman theoretical physicist and nobel prize winner (1901–1976)
  • Werner Arberb. 1929CHSwiss microbiologist and geneticist
  • Sigmund Jähnb. 1937DEnot in their usual nameEast German cosmonaut (1937–2019)
  • Werner Herzogb. 1942DEGerman film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director (born 1942)
  • Rainer Werner Fassbinderb. 1945DEGerman filmmaker, playwright and actor (1945-1982)
  • Klaus Johannisb. 1959ROnot in their usual namePresident of Romania from 2014 to 2025
  • Werner Faymannb. 1960ATAustrian politician who was Chancellor of Austria and chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Austria

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)

InformalHallo Werner,Hi Werner, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 89 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Werner
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)20261.8K#369
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)20241.1K#1,263
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020387—
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present)20242#1,792

Reference works 9

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 Werner come from?
from the German male personal name Werner, literally ‘guard-army’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How common is the name Werner?
In Poland, the national register counted 1,845 people named Werner in 2026, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
How common is Werner compared with other names?
In Germany, Werner is the 21st most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
Is Werner a male or female name?
Werner is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What are other forms of the name Werner?
In the etymology graph, Irnerius is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Werner?
A machine transcription gives /vɛʁnɐ/ (IPA) for German.
What does the name Werner mean?
In German, From a Germanic personal name (e.g. Warinheri); 39,488 bearers. Plate shows e ~ ö vowel variation with Wörner.
In which country does Werner have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 470 thousand people named Werner in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled werner.

What do you want to know about Werner?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/werner

The 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, “Werner” — the 21st most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Werner parses inside a full name →