Bolten
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymic from a personal name with weak genitive -en; illustrates weak-genitive patronym formation
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈboʊɫtən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bolten is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 54K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 466K
- NLNetherlands1 in 51K
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)
- Record sources
- 161 (measured from records)
- 1 in 51K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,500 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Patronymic from a personal name with weak genitive -en; illustrates weak-genitive patronym formation.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Where in the world
(measured from records)Bolten 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 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 54K | — | Bolten | 98 |
| US United States | 714 | 1 in 466K | 714 | Bolten | 161 |
| NL Netherlands | 339 | 1 in 51K | 339 | Bolten | 25 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈52 est. | ≈1 in 1.3M | — | Bolten | 16 |
| AT Austria | ≈34 est. | ≈1 in 259K | — | Bolten | 10 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 154K | — | Bolten | 21 |
| IE Ireland | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 300K | — | Bolten | 2 |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)Bolten is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Genitiv auf -en; Konkurrenz zu Übernamen aus mnd. bolt 'rasch, kühn, trotzig' oder zu Berufsname aus mnd. bolte 'Bolzen, Pfeil; Fessel'.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite singular of bolt
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)- Heinrich Bolten-Baeckersb. 1871DEGerman film director, screenwriter, film producer and author (1871–1938)
- Virginia Boltenb. 1876ARArgentine anarchist
- Edmund Boltenb. 1882DEGerman architect
- Wim Boltenb. 1901NLDutch sportsperson and athletics competitor (1901–1971)
- Ada Boltenb. 1903NLDutch freestyle swimmer (1903–1984)
- Jaap Boltenb. 1931NL(b. 1934)
- Joshua Boltenb. 1954USAmerican lawyer; former Director of the Office of Management and Budget
- Saskia Boltenb. 1954NLDutch politician
- Uwe Boltenb. 1959DEcyclist
- Niklas Boltenb. 1994DEGerman association football player
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)17 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 714 | #32,268 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 535 | #43,505 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 532 | #38,992 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 339 | #5,988 |
| 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
- 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 Bolten mean, and where does it come from?
- Patronymic from a personal name with weak genitive -en; illustrates weak-genitive patronym formation. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen.
- How do you pronounce Bolten?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈboʊɫtən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Bolten have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.5 thousand people named Bolten in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bolten.
- Where is Bolten most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bolten is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 51 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bolten?
- In the United States, the national register counted 714 people named Bolten in 2010, about 1 in 466 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bolten?
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/boltenThe 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, “Bolten”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.