Hannover
loc · Latin script
Meaning: name from the city of Hannover in Lower Saxony, whose name is first recorded in the form Honovere and is prob¬ ably composed of a Gmc element hon, perhaps meaning ‘marsh’ and akin to OE hamm (see Hamm
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 9 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Hannover is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 110K(inferred from the name graph)
- DKDenmark1 in 326K
- CLChile≈1 in 900K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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
- 60 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 106K (inferred from the name graph)
≈790 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)name from the city of Hannover in Lower Saxony, whose name is first recorded in the form Honovere and is prob¬ ably composed of a Gmc element hon, perhaps meaning ‘marsh’ and akin to OE hamm (see Hammer i), + MLG over bank, shore. Vars.: Ger.: Hanover. Jewish: Hanower.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Hannover is found
(measured from records)Hannover 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 | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 106K | — | Hannover | 60 |
| US United States | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 6.4M | listed | — | 32 |
| CL Chile | ≈22 est. | ≈1 in 904K | 1 | — | — |
| DK Denmark | 18 | 1 in 326K | 18 | — | 1 |
| ES Spain | 13 | 1 in 3.8M | 13 | Hannover | 10 |
| SE Sweden | 7 | 1 in 1.5M | 7 | — | 2 |
| CH Switzerland | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | 3 |
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: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register. 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)Hannover 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 English, prov, city, Germany
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, from Hannover, the city or region
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Finnish, Hanover (German city)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Croatian, 1. njemački grad u Donjoj Saksoniji, o. 600.000 stan. 2. administrativno područje u Donjoj Saksoniji 3. pov. a. nekadašnja država u SZ Njemačkoj, prvo izborna u okviru Svetog Rimskoga Carstva (1692—1806), potom kraljevstvo (1814—1866) pa pruska provincija (1866—1945) b. vladarska dinastija u Velikoj Britaniji (1714—1901), rodonačelnik je George Louis (kralj George I), knez izbornik Hannovera
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)- Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitzb. 1778DEnot in their usual nameDuchess of Mecklenburg, Princess of Prussia, Solms-Braunfels & Great Britain, Queen of Hanover (1778-1841)
- Emil Hannoverb. 1864DKDanish art historian (1864–1923)
- Frederica of Hanoverb. 1917DEnot in their usual nameQueen consort of Greece as the wife of King Paul; daughter of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick (1887-1953)
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)10 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 9 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Hannover mean, and where does it come from?
- name from the city of Hannover in Lower Saxony, whose name is first recorded in the form Honovere and is prob¬ ably composed of a Gmc element hon, perhaps meaning ‘marsh’ and akin to OE hamm (see Hamm… Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Hannover?
- Mondonomo estimates about 791 people named Hannover in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hannover. After it come United States, Chile, Denmark and Spain; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Hannover?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 18 people named Hannover, about 1 in 326 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Hannover?
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/hannoverThe 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, “Hannover”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.