Etter

surname · Latin script

Meaning: 1) see ADEL II; 2) mhd

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈɛtɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Etter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 3.1K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 66K
  • CACanada≈1 in 71K

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)

5,039 people, 2010

Sources
326 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 3.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Switzerland

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

1) see ADEL II; 2) mhd. eter 'village enclosure'; 3) Swiss 'cousin'.

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Etter 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.

Where Etter is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—5,0391 in 66K5KEtter326
CH Switzerland#1852,6861 in 3.1K2.7KEtter71
GB United Kingdom—≈690 est.≈1 in 96K—Etter41
DE Germany—≈650 est.≈1 in 123K—Etter71
CA Canada—≈530 est.≈1 in 71K—Etter45
NZ New Zealand—≈89 est.≈1 in 55K—Etter4
LB Lebanon—≈59 est.≈1 in 93K—Etter2

5,039 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; 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Etter is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Russian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, United States, Switzerland, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Эттер, Ètter, Еттер

43 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Etter is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, fence

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Swedish, atter, such as venom, poison (from an animal or plant)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Danish, first (person or thing in the first position)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, after

    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)

18501900195020002050Charles Etter, b. 1863Daniel Etter, b. 1876Philipp Etter, b. 1891Bob Etter, b. 1945Delores M. Etter, b. 1947Bill Etter, b. 1950Carrie Etter, b. 1969Lior Etter, b. 1990Lucas Etter, b. 2001

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)

FormalDear Etter,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 13 countries.

Official registers attesting Etter
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105K#6,701
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020005K#6,304
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.8K#6,791
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20242.7K#312
US United Stateswru 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

Where does the name Etter come from?
1) see ADEL II; 2) mhd. eter 'village enclosure'; 3) Swiss 'cousin'. Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Etter?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɛtɝ/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Etter mean?
Recorded meaning: 1) see ADEL II; 2) mhd.
In which country does Etter have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 5.0 thousand people named Etter, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled etter.
Where is Etter most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Etter is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.1 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Etter?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,039 people named Etter in 2010, about 1 in 66 thousand residents.
How common is Etter compared with other names?
In Switzerland, Etter is the 185th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Etter?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/etter

The 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, “Etter” — the 185th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Etter parses inside a full name →