Alster
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a tributary of the Elbe River, Germany
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/æɫstɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ILIsrael1 in 27Kas אלסטר(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 598Kas Elster
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 1.1M
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 Alster 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)
- Sources
- 141 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1M (inferred from the name graph)
556 named Elster, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled אלסטר in IL Israel, PL Poland, RO Romania and 1 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)
a tributary of the Elbe River, Germany
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alster 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 | 556as Elster | 1 in 598K | 591 | Alster | 141 |
| IL Israel | 324as אלסטר | 1 in 27K | 324 | אלסטר | 20 |
| PL Poland | 124as Elster | 1 in 309K | 65 | אלסטר | 2 |
| RO Romania | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 229K | — | אלסטר | 2 |
| NO Norway | 90as Elster | 1 in 61K | 90 | — | 1 |
| DK Denmark | 52as Elster | 1 in 113K | 52 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 1.1M | — | Alster | 3 |
| AR Argentina | 14 | 1 in 3.2M | 14 | — | 2 |
| LV Latvia | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 132K | — | אלסטר | 2 |
556 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling elster. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Alster 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.
In Swedish, a work (product, especially an intellectual or artistic product)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Raoul Alsterb. 1899CHSwiss actor (1899-1962)
- Antoni Alsterb. 1903PLPolish politician
- Ladislav Alsterb. 1927CZCzech chess player (1927–1991)
- Gerda Elata-Alsterb. 1930ATAustrian-Israeli literary scholar
- Bendt Alsterb. 1946orientalist (1946-2012)
- Kazimierz Alsterb. 1947PLPolish mathematician
- Günther Alsterb. 1955ATAustrian alpine skier
- Lena Wallman Alsterb. 1957SESwedish actress
- Darina Alsterb. 1979CZCzech visual artist
- Christoph Alsterb. 1980ATAustrian alpine skier
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)
Attested in 16 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 267 | #72,771 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 249 | #81,829 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 218 | #80,812 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 15 | #30,182 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 14 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 10 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 10 | #131,965 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 8 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 8 | #148,575 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Alster mean, and where does it come from?
- a tributary of the Elbe River, Germany Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Alster?
- A machine transcription gives /æɫstɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Alster have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 556 people named Elster, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Alster?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 14 people named Alster, about 1 in 3.2 million residents.
What do you want to know about Alster?
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/alsterThe 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, “Alster”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.