Kalmar
loc · Latin script
Meaning: occupational name from kalmdr ‘merchant’ (from Middle High German kram ‘trading post’, ‘tent’)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kʰal̪mar/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kalmar is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- HRCroatia1 in 59K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 77K
- NONorway1 in 109K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 204 (measured from records)
- 1 in 59K (inferred from the name graph)
591 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Croatia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kalmár in GB United Kingdom.
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)
occupational name from kalmdr ‘merchant’ (from Middle High German kram ‘trading post’, ‘tent’).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kalmar 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 591 | 1 in 563K | 652 | Kalmar | 204 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 674K | — | Kalmár | 53 |
| AU Australia | ≈78 est. | ≈1 in 325K | — | Kalmar | 46 |
| DK Denmark | 76 | 1 in 77K | 76 | — | — |
| HR Croatia | 72 | 1 in 59K | 72 | — | — |
| NO Norway | 50 | 1 in 109K | 50 | — | 3 |
| SE Sweden | 46 | 1 in 222K | 46 | Kalmar | 10 |
| FI Finland | 30 | 1 in 186K | 30 | — | — |
591 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Kalmar is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, habitational name from the seaport of Kalmar, which is situated opposite the island of Oland.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, A small city and municipality in Kalmar County, Sweden.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, squid (sea animal)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, squid
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Basque, "Pota, volador, lora ( Toradotes sagittatus ), egatxubia, kalmarra " FauMar 125.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)
- Annie Kalmarb. 1877DEstage actor (1877-1901)
- Paula Wolf-Kalmarb. 1880ATAustrian chess player
- Bert Kalmarb. 1884USAmerican lyricist (1884-1947)
- Rudolf Kalmarb. 1900ATAustrian author (1900–1974)
- Fritz Kalmarb. 1911ATAustrian actor (1911-2008)
- Franziska Kalmarb. 1929ATAustrian actress, first Austrian TV announcer
- Stephen K. Bataldenb. 1945USnot in their usual nameAmerican historian and university teacher
- Ivan Kalmarb. 1948CAanthropologist
- Carlos Kalmarb. 1958UYUruguayan conductor
- Kalmar Ulmb. 1969EEEstonian historian (born 1969)
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 33 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 652 | #36,847 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 591 | #37,646 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 540 | #38,524 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 76 | #7,137 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 72 | #10,207 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 65 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 50 | #26,311 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 46 | #13,621 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 30 | #35,991 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Kalmar mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name from kalmdr ‘merchant’ (from Middle High German kram ‘trading post’, ‘tent’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kalmar?
- A machine transcription gives /kʰal̪mar/ (IPA) for Swedish.
- In which country does Kalmar have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 591 people named Kalmar, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kalmar.
- Where is Kalmar most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kalmar is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 59 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kalmar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 591 people named Kalmar in 2010, about 1 in 563 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kalmar?
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/kalmarThe 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, “Kalmar”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.