Schwarz
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from nd. swart ‘dark-haired, black’; often as a distinguishing nickname
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 25 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ʃvaʁt͡s/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Schwarz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 799(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 1K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.8K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 320 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 799 (inferred from the name graph)
≈100,000 people, est.
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)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)medieval German and Jewish nickname for a black-haired or swarthy person
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Schwarz is read
(measured from records)Schwarz 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.
- German45%
from nd. swart ‘dark-haired, black’; often as a distinguishing nickname
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from a nickname for dark hair or complexion; 'black'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
trait surname: schwarz/black, dark-haired or swarthy; bearer count not printed on this line
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Personal characteristic: black/dark hair or swarthy complexion; 57663 bearers.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- English41%
medieval German and Jewish nickname for a black-haired or swarthy person
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)Schwarz 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #20 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 799 | listed | Schwarz | 259 |
| US United States | — | 15,884 | 1 in 21K | 16K | Schwarz | 320 |
| AT Austria | #23 | ≈8,600 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Schwarz | 140 |
| CH Switzerland | #100 | 4,781 | 1 in 1.8K | 4.8K | Schwarz | 97 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,460 | 1 in 86K | 2.5K | — | 2 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 1,502 | 1 in 7.1K | 1.5K | — | 1 |
| SK Slovakia | — | 438 | 1 in 12K | 438 | — | — |
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: the dfa-band-3 register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census). 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)Schwarz 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.
Given name as personal characteristics, black in Under Rhine.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
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)- Hermann Schwarzb. 1843DEGerman mathematician (1843-1921)
- Franz Xaver Schwarzb. 1875DEpolitician from Germany (1875-1947)
- Mommie Schwarzb. 1876NLDutch painter (1876-1942)
- Reinhard Schwarz-Schillingb. 1904DEGerman composer
- Harry Schwarzb. 1924DESouth African activist (1924-2010)
- Henning Schwarzb. 1928DEpolitician (1928-1993)
- Stefan Schwarzb. 1969SESwedish association football player
- Jessica Schwarzb. 1977DEGerman actress
- Sandro Schwarzb. 1978DEGerman footballer and manager
- Annette Schwarzb. 1984DEGerman pornographic 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)42 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 16K | #2,295 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 16K | #2,119 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,292 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4.8K | #121 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.5K | #4,058 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 1.5K | #827 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 1.5K | #840 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1.5K | #842 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 438 | — |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 3 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
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 Schwarz come from?
- medieval German and Jewish nickname for a black-haired or swarthy person Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Schwarz?
- In the etymology graph, Swart and Zwart are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Schwarz?
- A machine transcription gives /ʃvaʁt͡s/ (IPA) for German.
- What does the name Schwarz mean?
- In German, from nd. swart ‘dark-haired, black’; often as a distinguishing nickname
- In which country does Schwarz have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 100 thousand people named Schwarz in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schwarz.
- How common is the name Schwarz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 15,884 people named Schwarz in 2010, about 1 in 21 thousand residents.
- How common is Schwarz compared with other names?
- In Germany, Schwarz is the 20th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Schwarz?
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/schwarzThe 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, “Schwarz” — the 20th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.