Jäger
surname · Latin script
Meaning: hunter
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jeːɡɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jäger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 59th most common surname.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.3K
- NLNetherlands1 in 2.3K
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 Jäger 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 391 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈35,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Jager in NL Netherlands, ZA South Africa, SI Slovenia and Jaeger in US United States, CH Switzerland.
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)
hunter
Sources 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jäger 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 | #59 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Jäger | 177 |
| ZA South Africa | #242 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Jager | 97 |
| US United States | — | 12,436as Jaeger | 1 in 27K | 12K | Jaeger | 391 |
| NL Netherlands | #57 | 7,449 | 1 in 2.3K | 7.4K | Jager | 114 |
| CH Switzerland | #115 | 3,191 | 1 in 2.6K | 3.2K | Jaeger | 56 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 753 | 1 in 2.8K | 753 | Jager | 10 |
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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); 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)
Jäger 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, hunter (male or of unspecified sex)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The hunter, in Baden district Under Rhine 1809, Austria and Tyrol.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In English, Alternative form of jaeger.
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)
- Oskar Jägerb. 1830DEGerman historian (1830-1910)
- Gustav Jägerb. 1832DEGerman naturalist and hygienist (1832-1917)
- Gustav Jägerb. 1865ATAustrian physicist (1865-1938)
- Karl Jägerb. 1888CHSwiss-born SS officer and Einsatzkommando leader (1888–1959)
- Peer Jägerb. 1943DEGerman actor
- Bernd Jägerb. 1951DEEast German gymnast
- Michael Jägerb. 1956DEGerman artist
- Michael Jägerb. 1966DEGerman actor
- Stefan Jägerb. 1970CHSwiss screenwriter and film producer
- Julia Jägerb. 1970DEGerman actress
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)
Attested in 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3.2K | #238 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 122 | #16,227 |
Reference works 4
- 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 Jäger mean, and where does it come from?
- hunter Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of German.
- How do you pronounce Jäger?
- A machine transcription gives /jeːɡɐ/ (IPA) for German.
- In which country does Jäger have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 35 thousand people named Jäger in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jäger.
- How common is the name Jäger?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 7,449 people named Jäger in 2007, about 1 in 2.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Jäger compared with other names?
- In Germany, Jäger is the 59th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jäger?
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/j%C3%A4gerThe 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, “Jäger” — the 59th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.