Braun
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Braun is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Germany it is the 21st most common surname. In English, recorded as From a medieval German nickname for a brown-haired person, tanned person, or one who wore brown clothes.
- DEGermany≈1 in 805(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.5K
- ATAustria≈1 in 3.2K
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 Braun 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 454 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 805 (inferred from the name graph)
≈230,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Bryon in BR Brazil.
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)
From a medieval German nickname for a brown-haired person, tanned person, or one who wore brown clothes.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
How Braun is read(measured from records)
Braun 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.
- English53%
From a medieval German nickname for a brown-haired person, tanned person, or one who wore brown clothes.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German27%
from German braun 'brown'; originally a nickname for complexion/hair
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from a nickname for brown hair or complexion; 'brown'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
German surname from a word meaning “brown”.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
brown
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
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)
Braun 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈230,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | — | Braun | 10 |
| US United States | #860 | 192,773as Bryant | 1 in 1.7K | 1M | Braun | 454 |
| DE Germany | #21 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 805 | listed | Braun | 283 |
| BR Brazil | — | 9,008 | 1 in 24K | 72K | Bryon | 22 |
| CA Canada | #600 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | 11 | Braun | 179 |
| CH Switzerland | #168 | 3,329 | 1 in 2.5K | 3.3K | Braun | 86 |
| AT Austria | #138 | ≈2,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | 197 | Braun | 100 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 1.4K | — | 28 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es). 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)
Braun 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.
Braun is a given name; Brown is the American translation.
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)
- Alexander Karl Heinrich Braunb. 1805DEGerman botanist and university teacher (1805–1877)
- Karl Ferdinand Braunb. 1850DEGerman physicist (1850–1918)
- Lily Braunb. 1865DEGerman writer, editor (1865–1916)
- Otto Braunb. 1872DEGerman politician (1872-1955)
- Ilse Braunb. 1909DEsister of Eva Braun (1909-1979)
- Eva Braunb. 1912DEphotographer, longtime companion and later wife of Adolf Hitler (1912–1945)
- Gretl Braunb. 1915DEsister of Eva Braun (1915-1987); sister-in-law of Adolf Hitler
- Yaël Braun-Pivetb. 1970FRFrench politician (born 1970)
- Scooter Braunb. 1981USAmerican talent manager and businessman
- Nicholas Braunb. 1988USAmerican actor (born 1988)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 34K | #1,012 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 34K | #1,018 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 33K | #973 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 9K | #1,420 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3.3K | #212 |
| LU Luxembourg | Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 1.4K | #25 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Braun mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval German nickname for a brown-haired person, tanned person, or one who wore brown clothes. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Braun have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 228 thousand people named Braun in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled braun.
- How common is the name Braun?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 9,008 people named Braun, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Braun compared with other names?
- In Germany, Braun is the 21st most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Braun?
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/braunThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Braun” — the 21st most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.