Fuchs
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: from Fuchs ‘fox’; nickname for a red-haired, sly person, or possibly other origins
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/fʊks/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fuchs is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Austria it is the 15th most common surname.
- ATAustria≈1 in 778(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.1K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.1K
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 Fuchs 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 402 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 778 (inferred from the name graph)
152,334 named Fox, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 applied to someone thought to resemble a fox, e.g. in cunning or red hair; from German Fuchs ‘fox’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fuchs is read(measured from records)
Fuchs 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.
- German40%
from Fuchs ‘fox’; nickname for a red-haired, sly person, or possibly other origins
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from the animal name Fuchs 'fox'; often a nickname for a red-haired person
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from the animal name 'fox'; also from French Renard in some cases
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
personal characteristic: fox, red-haired or sly
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- English38%
From a medieval German nickname applied to someone thought to resemble a fox, e.g. in cunning or red hair; from German Fuchs ‘fox’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- French6.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Fuchs in French.
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)
Fuchs 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 | — | 152,334as Fox | 1 in 2.2K | 152K | Fuchs | 402 |
| DE Germany | #45 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Fuchs | 251 |
| AT Austria | #15 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 778 | 3 | Fuchs | 141 |
| CH Switzerland | #38 | 7,575 | 1 in 1.1K | 7.6K | Fuchs | 114 |
| FR France | — | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 648 | — | 7 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈940 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | — | Fuchs | 38 |
152,334 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling fox. 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; Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Fuchs 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.
Fuchs is a name from the Judengasse of Frankfort on Main, house n°78 of the Ghetto in 1776. It means Fox.
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)
- Leonhart Fuchsb. 1501DEGerman physician and botanist (1501–1566)
- Johann Joseph Fuxb. 1660DEnot in their usual nameAustrian composer
- Lazarus Fuchsb. 1833PLGerman mathematician (1833–1902)
- Vivian Fuchsb. 1908GBBritish explorer (1908–1999)
- Klaus Fuchsb. 1911GBGerman-born British theoretical physicist and atomic spy (1911-1988)
- Ruth Fuchsb. 1946DEGerman politician and athlete, Olympic champion (1946–2023)
- Argel Fuchsb. 1974BRBrazilian association football player
- Dana Fuchsb. 1976USsinger
- Jason Fuchsb. 1986USAmerican actor (born 1986)
- Christian Fuchsb. 1986ATAustrian association football player and manager (born 1986)
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 42 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,784 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 13K | #2,612 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,807 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 7.6K | #49 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 959 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 900 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 807 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 742 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 742 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 669 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 667 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 648 | — |
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
- Where does the name Fuchs come from?
- From a medieval German nickname applied to someone thought to resemble a fox, e.g. in cunning or red hair; from German Fuchs ‘fox’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Fuchs?
- A machine transcription gives /fʊks/ (IPA) for German.
- What does the name Fuchs mean?
- In German, from Fuchs ‘fox’; nickname for a red-haired, sly person, or possibly other origins
- What are other forms of the name Fuchs?
- In the etymology graph, Fox is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Fuchs have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 152 thousand people named Fox, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Fuchs?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 7,575 people named Fuchs in 2024, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Fuchs compared with other names?
- In Austria, Fuchs is the 15th most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fuchs?
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/fuchsThe 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, “Fuchs” — the 15th most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.