Harsch

surname · Latin script

Meaning: metonymic occupational name for a soldier, from Middle High German harsch, harst ‘body of troops’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

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

Harsch is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany
  • USUnited States
  • CACanada

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

metonymic occupational name for a soldier, from Middle High German harsch, harst ‘body of troops’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Recorded in:

No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.

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)

Harsch is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • nickname for a stem or severe man, from Middle Low German harsch ‘harsh’, ‘stem’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In German, rough, harsh

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

  • In gmw-ecg, deer

    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)

14001600180020002200Heinrich Harsch, b. 1400Johnny Harsch, b. 1929Ulrich Harsch, b. 1938Wolfgang Harsch, b. 1942Roland Harsch, b. 1951Dorothée Harsch, b. 1954Eddie Harsch, b. 1957Erich Harsch, b. 1961Claudia Harsch, b. 1969Klaudius Harsch, 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 Harsch,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 16 sources across 9 countries.

Official registers attesting Harsch
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.2K#20,382
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.2K#22,346
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.1K#23,219
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024105#10,642
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—26—
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)200811#67,200
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—11#16,602
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19218—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19118—
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—6#154,812
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20265—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—5#196,204

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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

What does the name Harsch mean, and where does it come from?
metonymic occupational name for a soldier, from Middle High German harsch, harst ‘body of troops’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Harsch?
A machine transcription gives /ˈhɑɹʃ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Harsch have the most bearers?
Harsch is most frequently recorded in the United States.

What do you want to know about Harsch?

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

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, “Harsch”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Harsch parses inside a full name →