Altena
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: Altena (a municipality of North Brabant, Netherlands)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/əltɛnə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Altena is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 6.5K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 683K
- USUnited States1 in 1.1M
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- Sources
- 34 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.5K (inferred from the name graph)
2,644 people, 2007
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Altena (a municipality of North Brabant, Netherlands)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Altena is read(measured from records)
Altena 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.
- English42%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Altena in English.
- Dutch24%
Altena (a municipality of North Brabant, Netherlands)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German17%
Ostfriesische Familiennamen auf -ena aus der Endung des Gen. Pl. der schwachen Deklination; bezeichnet Zugehörigkeit zu einer Person. Typ mit 26 Types/1955 Tokens; auch -sena möglich.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Friesische Familiennamen auf -ena; meist aus Rufnamen, teils auch aus Stammes- oder Wohnstättennamen. Morphologisches Suffixmuster -ena.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Altena 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | 2,644 | 1 in 6.5K | 2.6K | Altena | 15 |
| US United States | 312 | 1 in 1.1M | 312 | Altena | 17 |
| SE Sweden | 8 | 1 in 1.3M | 8 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 8 | 1 in 683K | 8 | — | — |
| ES Spain | 8 | 1 in 6.3M | 8 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 4 | 1 in 1.5M | 4 | — | — |
2,644 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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: CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Altena 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 Latvian, pilsēta Vācijā ("Altena"), Ziemeļreinas-Vestfālenes federālajā zemē, 17600 iedzīvotāju (2013. g.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Carl Altenab. 1894DEGerman painter (1894-1971)
- Maarten Altenab. 1943NLDutch composer and contrabassist (born 1943)
- Bert Altenab. 1950NLDutch historian
- Klaus Altenab. 1962DEGerman rower
- Arie Altenab. 1966NLDutch writer (born 1966)
- Bob Altenab. 1986NLDutch decathlete
- Eliyha Altenab. 2002NLDutch actor
- Jordi Altenab. 2003NLDutch association football player
- Dick AltenaNLDutch singer and songwriter
- Bas AltenaNOresearcher
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 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 2.6K | #422 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 312 | #63,873 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 297 | #70,918 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 263 | #69,636 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #60,030 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 8 | #44,998 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4 | #74,503 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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
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 Altena mean, and where does it come from?
- Altena (a municipality of North Brabant, Netherlands) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Altena?
- A machine transcription gives /əltɛnə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Altena have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 2.6 thousand people named Altena, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled altena.
- Where is Altena most common?
- Altena is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 6.5 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Altena?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 2,644 people named Altena in 2007, about 1 in 6.5 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Altena?
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/altenaThe 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, “Altena”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.