Hafner
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: German/Jewish occupational name meaning ‘potter’, from German dialect Hafen ‘pot’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 23 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈhaːfnɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Hafner is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In Belize it is the 29th most common surname.
- SISlovenia1 in 2.2K(measured from records)
- ATAustria≈1 in 2.7K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 4.1K
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 Hafner itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 334 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈10,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Slovenia
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)German/Jewish occupational name meaning ‘potter’, from German dialect Hafen ‘pot’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Hafner is read
(measured from records)Hafner 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.
- English63%
German/Jewish occupational name meaning ‘potter’, from German dialect Hafen ‘pot’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German23%
Occupational surname: potter/ceramic worker; bearer count not printed on this page.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Occupational surname: potter/potmaker; bearer count not given on this page.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
from the occupation of potter/potter-maker
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
name for a potter, from an agent deriv. of Ger. dial. Hafen pot, dish (MHG hafen, OHG havan). This is the normal term for the occupation in S Germany and Austria, and the Ger. surname is confined largely to this area. Other names referring to this occupation may be found at Euler, Topfer, and Potter. Vars.: Haffner, Hef(f)ner. Ger. only: Hafner.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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)Hafner 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 | #418 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.3K | listed | Hafner | 151 |
| US United States | — | 5,187 | 1 in 64K | 5.2K | Hafner | 334 |
| AT Austria | #191 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Hafner | 91 |
| CH Switzerland | #278 | 2,035 | 1 in 4.1K | 2K | Hafner | 73 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 969 | 1 in 2.2K | 969 | Hafner | 12 |
| BZ Belize | #29 | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | — | Hafner | 1 |
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 dfa-band-1 register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)Hafner 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.
occupational name for a potter. Middle High German hafner, an agent derivative of Middle High German hafen ‘pot’, ‘dish’. This is the normal term for the occupation in southeastern Germany and Austria, and the German surname is found mainly in this area, also in Slovenia.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)- Raoul Hafnerb. 1905ATAustrian aerospace engineer (1905–1980)
- Anton Hafnerb. 1918DEGerman World War II fighter pilot (1918–1944)
- Ingrid Hafnerb. 1936GBBritish actress (1936-1994)
- Edo Hafnerb. 1955SIYugoslav and Slovenian ice hockey player
- Katie Hafnerb. 1957USAmerican journalist
- Stefan Hafnerb. 1976ATAustrian screenwriter
- Travis Hafnerb. 1977USAmerican baseball player
- Sabina Hafnerb. 1984CHSwiss bobsledder
- Alex Hafnerb. 1989ATactor
- Lislot Hanot in their usual namemusician
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)38 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.2K | #6,532 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.1K | #6,136 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 4.9K | #6,656 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2K | #463 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 969 | #175 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
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 Hafner mean, and where does it come from?
- German/Jewish occupational name meaning ‘potter’, from German dialect Hafen ‘pot’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Hafner?
- In German /ˈhaːfnɐ/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Hafner have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Hafner in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hafner.
- Where is Hafner most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Hafner is densest in Slovenia — about 1 in 2.2 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Hafner?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,187 people named Hafner in 2010, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
- How common is Hafner compared with other names?
- In Germany, Hafner is the 418th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Hafner?
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/hafnerThe 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, “Hafner” — the 418th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.