Schwab

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: ‘person from Swabia’, a region of southern Germany

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Schwab is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 2K(measured from records)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 3.5K
  • DEGermany≈1 in 3.7K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈59,000 people, est.

Sources
396 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

‘person from Swabia’, a region of southern Germany

Sources 1

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

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Schwab is read(measured from records)

Schwab is one spelling over 3 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.

  • English64%

    ‘person from Swabia’, a region of southern Germany

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

  • German17%

    Toponymic surname from Schwaben; usually a Herkunftsname, also Übername. < SiedlungsN X / < ON X not given. Bearer count: 9762.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

    Toponymic surname from the place/region name Schwaben (Swabia); bearer count 9762.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

    for someone from Swabia, Ger. Schwaben, so called from a Gmc tribe recorded from the ist cent, bc in the L form Suebi or Suevi, of uncertain origin. This region in S Ger¬ many was an independent duchy from the ioth cent, until 1313, when the territory was broken up. Vars.: Ger.: Schwob. Jewish: Schwabe.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

    Toponymic surname from the regional name Schwaben; the form is explained as wohl kaum patronymischer schwacher Gen., sondern eher Dat. Pl. der Landesbezeichnung ze Swāben. Variant counts in text: Schwaben 60, Schwo(o)b 270+9, Schwobe 29, Schwa(a)f 7+3, Schwaff 5.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

    ethnic surname meaning 'Swabian'

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • Spanish6.4%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Schwab in Spanish.

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)

Schwab 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 Schwab is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈59,000 est.≈1 in 23K—Schwab4
DE Germany#214≈22,000 est.≈1 in 3.7KlistedSchwab195
US United States—16,8701 in 20K17KSchwab396
CH Switzerland#1274,1261 in 2K4.1KSchwab81
ID Indonesia—≈3,600 est.≈1 in 75K—Schwab7
AT Austria#156≈2,500 est.≈1 in 3.5K—Schwab91
LA Laos—≈510 est.≈1 in 15K—Schwab5
IE Ireland—≈310 est.≈1 in 17K—Schwab8

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-4 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).

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

Schwab is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Schwáb

  • Hindi surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Switzerland, Canada, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written Schwáb

  • Hungarian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom

    Also written Schwáb

  • Russian surname25 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek

    Also written Шваб, Shvab, Сваб, Schwaab, Svab

47 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

175018001850190019502000Gustav Schwab, b. 1792Charles M. Schwab, b. 1862Charles R. Schwab, b. 1937Klaus Schwab, b. 1938Mary Roos, b. 1949Charlotte Schwab, b. 1952Susan Schwab, b. 1955Thomas Schwab, b. 1962V. E. Schwab, b. 1987Stefan Schwab, b. 1990

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 34 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Schwab
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201017K#2,152
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200016K#2,035
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202016K#2,177
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20244.1K#147
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 4———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 6

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 Schwab mean, and where does it come from?
‘person from Swabia’, a region of southern Germany Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Schwab have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 59 thousand people named Schwab in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schwab.
Where is Schwab most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Schwab is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 2.0 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Schwab?
In the United States, the national register counted 16,870 people named Schwab in 2010, about 1 in 20 thousand residents.
How common is Schwab compared with other names?
In Switzerland, Schwab is the 127th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Schwab?

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

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, “Schwab” — the 127th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Schwab parses inside a full name →