Balmer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) Person who sells spices and perfumes, from Middle English balme ‘balm, ointment’; (ii) person from Balm, a place-name in Switzerland or southern Germany meaning ‘hollow place, cave’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈbɑmɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Balmer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 35K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 50K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 280 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
3,204 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) Person who sells spices and perfumes, from Middle English balme ‘balm, ointment’; (ii) person from Balm, a place-name in Switzerland or southern Germany meaning ‘hollow place, cave’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Balmer 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 | — | 3,204 | 1 in 104K | 3.2K | Balmer | 280 |
| CH Switzerland | #260 | 2,796 | 1 in 3K | 2.8K | Balmer | 60 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 35K | listed | Balmer | 150 |
| AU Australia | — | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Balmer | 90 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 161K | — | Balmer | 57 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 38K | — | Balmer | 24 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈73 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Balmer | 21 |
3,204 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 reaney-english-surnames-1991 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Balmer is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from ME balme, bawme ‘balm’; first attested Richard le Baumere 1305 LoCt
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, Richard le Baumere 1305 LoCt. A derivative of ME balme, bawme, an aromatic
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In German, from the same stem as Balmach/Balme
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
- Johann Jakob Balmerb. 1825CHSwiss mathematician (1825–1898)
- Wilhelm Balmerb. 1865CHSwiss artist (1865-1922)
- Billy Balmerb. 1877GBEnglish footballer (1877-1937)
- Bob Balmerb. 1882GBEnglish footballer (1882-?)
- Edwin Balmerb. 1883USAmerican science fiction writer (1883–1959)
- Jack Balmerb. 1916GBEnglish footballer (1916-1984)
- Jean-François Balmerb. 1946CHSwiss-French film, television, and theater actor
- Randall Balmerb. 1954USAmerican writer and historian
- Alexandre Balmerb. 2000CHSwiss cyclist
- Kofi Balmerb. 2000GBNorthern Irish footballer
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 27 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.2K | #10,059 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.9K | #10,173 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.8K | #290 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.8K | #10,920 |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of English Surnames (Reaney & Wilson, 1991) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Balmer mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Person who sells spices and perfumes, from Middle English balme ‘balm, ointment’; (ii) person from Balm, a place-name in Switzerland or southern Germany meaning ‘hollow place, cave’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Balmer?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈbɑmɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Balmer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 3.2 thousand people named Balmer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled balmer.
- Where is Balmer most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Balmer is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.0 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Balmer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,204 people named Balmer in 2010, about 1 in 104 thousand residents.
- How common is Balmer compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Balmer is the 260th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Balmer?
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/balmerThe 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, “Balmer” — the 260th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.