Höfer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Vowel variation plate shows Hö/oe vs Ho; likely Herkunfts-, Wohnstätten- or Berufsname zu mhd (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 9 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈhøːfɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Höfer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Austria than in any other country, where it is the 11th most common surname. Höfer is also written โฮเฟอร in Thai.
- ATAustria≈1 in 480(inferred from the name graph)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 911
- DEGermany≈1 in 7.2K
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 Höfer 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.
- Austria (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 323 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 482 (inferred from the name graph)
≈19,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Höfer in other scripts: Thai
(measured from records)Locally spelled Hofer in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria and 3 more.
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.
How to pronounce Höfer
- German:/ˈhøːfɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Vowel variation plate shows Hö/oe vs Ho; likely Herkunfts-, Wohnstätten- or Berufsname zu mhd. hovære 'Inhaber eines Hofes'; auch Übername zu mhd./mnd. hover 'Höcker, Buckel'. 5572 Träger.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Höfer is found
(measured from records)Höfer 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT Austria | #11 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 482 | — | Hofer | 144 |
| DE Germany | #227 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.2K | — | Hofer | 163 |
| CH Switzerland | #40 | 9,227 | 1 in 911 | 9.2K | Hofer | 115 |
| US United States | — | 7,682 | 1 in 43K | 8.3K | Hofer | 323 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Hofer | 68 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #864 | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Hofer | 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)Höfer 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.
In German, Herkunfts-/Wohnstättenname zu Hof; Karte zeigt o/ö-Varianz im Stammvokal. 2,62‰ in PLZ 956, 2,61‰ in PLZ 086, 2,35‰ in PLZ 562, 2,21‰ in PLZ 576.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Herkunfts- bzw. Wohnstättenname; Nebenkarte behandelt Höfer/Hofer und die o/ö-Vokalvarianz.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Simplizium zu mhd. hof; zeigt ö/o-Variation. Schweiz: 31+4707.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
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)- Candida Höferb. 1944DEGerman photographer (born 1944)
- Anita Höferb. 1944DEGerman actress
- Andreas Höferb. 1964DEartist
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)14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 9 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you pronounce Höfer?
- In German /ˈhøːfɐ/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Höfer mean?
- Recorded meaning: Vowel variation plate shows Hö/oe vs Ho; likely Herkunfts-, Wohnstätten- or Berufsname zu mhd.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Höfer?
- Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Höfer in Austria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled hofer. After it come Germany, Switzerland, United States and Italy; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Höfer?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 9,227 people named Höfer in 2024, about 1 in 911 residents.
- How common is Höfer compared with other names?
- In Austria, Höfer is the 11th most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Höfer?
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/h%C3%B6ferThe 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, “Höfer” — the 11th most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.