Kahr
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably a short form of the medieval personal name Makarius, from Greek makarios ‘blessed’ (Dictionary of American Family Names)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Kahr is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Austria than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 5Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 9.7Kfew records
- DKDenmark1 in 25K
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 Kahr itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.
- Austria (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 145 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 5.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,800 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kaehr in CH Switzerland and Kähr in EE Estonia.
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)probably a short form of the medieval personal name Makarius, from Greek makarios ‘blessed’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where the surname Kahr is found
(measured from records)Kahr 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 | #533 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Kahr | 70 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈510 est. | ≈1 in 163K | — | Kahr | 58 |
| US United States | — | 259as Kaehr | 1 in 1.3M | 307 | Kahr | 145 |
| DK Denmark | — | 235 | 1 in 25K | 235 | Kahr | 3 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 193 | 1 in 44K | 193 | Kaehr | 11 |
| EE Estonia | #815 | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 9.7K | 49 | Kähr | 9 |
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 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); the ee-stat-nimed 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)Kahr 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 German, habitational name from a place called Kahr.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, unexplained.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In gmw-ecg, turning point
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In vro, bear
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)- Gustav Ritter von Kahrb. 1862DEGerman politician (1862-1934)
- Karl Kahrb. 1914ATNazi concentration camp doctor
- Elke Kahrb. 1961ATAustrian politician
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)22 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kahr mean, and where does it come from?
- probably a short form of the medieval personal name Makarius, from Greek makarios ‘blessed’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kahr?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 thousand people named Kahr in Austria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kahr. After it come Germany, United States, Denmark and Switzerland; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kahr?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 235 people named Kahr, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
- How common is Kahr compared with other names?
- In Austria, Kahr is the 533rd most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kahr?
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/kahrThe 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, “Kahr” — the 533rd most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.