Horn
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Horn is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Germany it is the 90th most common surname. In English, recorded as (i) horn-player; (ii) person living by a horn-shaped feature or from a place so named; (iii) maker of horn articles; (iv) medieval nickname, perhaps for appearance or a cuckold.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 4.9K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 5.4K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 505 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈210,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Cambodia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) horn-player; (ii) person living by a horn-shaped feature or from a place so named; (iii) maker of horn articles; (iv) medieval nickname, perhaps for appearance or a cuckold.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Horn is read(measured from records)
Horn 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.
- English75%
(i) horn-player; (ii) person living by a horn-shaped feature or from a place so named; (iii) maker of horn articles; (iv) medieval nickname, perhaps for appearance or a cuckold.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
metonymic for Hornblower or Horner; or from Horne (Rutland, Somerset, Surrey) or a residence by a spur/tongue of land or bend; first attested Lifwine Hom 1066–86 OEByn
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- German9.2%
from Horn 'horn' or a horn-shaped place name; also a Germanic byname
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from horn 'horn, spur, point'; also from place names Horn-
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)
Horn 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | — | Horn | 11 |
| US United States | #530 | 52,138 | 1 in 6.4K | 52K | Horn | 505 |
| DE Germany | #90 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Horn | 199 |
| KH Cambodia | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Horn | 25 |
| ZA South Africa | #613 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | — | Horn | 91 |
| NO Norway | #524 | 2,114 | 1 in 2.6K | 2.1K | Horn | 59 |
| NZ New Zealand | #532 | ≈910 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Horn | 57 |
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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Horn is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
presumably from German Horn ‘hom’, adopted as a surname for reasons that are not clear. It may be purely ornamental, or it may refer to the ram’s hom (Hebrew shofar) blown in the Synagogue during various ceremonies.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name from any of several farmsteads so named, from Old Norse horn ‘hom’, ‘spur of land’.
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)
- Gustav Horn, Count of Porib. 1592SESwedish/Finnish politician (1592-1657)
- Gyula Hornb. 1932HUHungarian politician (1932–2013)
- Shirley Hornb. 1934USAmerican singer (1934–2005)
- Rebecca Hornb. 1944DEGerman visual artist (1944–2024)
- Trevor Hornb. 1949GBBritish record producer and musician
- Kaniehtiio Hornb. 1986CACanadian actress (b. 1986)
- Michelle Hornb. 1987USAmerican actress
- Cody Hornb. 1988USAmerican actress
- Timo Hornb. 1993DEGerman association football player
- Thomas Hornb. 1997USAmerican actor
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)
Attested in 45 sources across 27 countries.
Reference works 7
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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
- What does the name Horn mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) horn-player; (ii) person living by a horn-shaped feature or from a place so named; (iii) maker of horn articles; (iv) medieval nickname, perhaps for appearance or a cuckold. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Horn have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 210 thousand people named Horn in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled horn.
- How common is the name Horn?
- In the United States, the national register counted 52,138 people named Horn in 2010, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Horn compared with other names?
- In Germany, Horn is the 90th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Horn?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/hornThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Horn” — the 90th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.