Kantor
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) ‘choirmaster’ or ‘village schoolmaster’, from German Kantor, from Latin cantor ‘singer’; (ii) ‘Jewish cantor’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkæntɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kantor is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- HUHungary≈1 in 12K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 84K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 99K
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
- 333 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.2K (inferred from the name graph)
3,982 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kántor in SK Slovakia.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- GermanKantor(measured from records)
- Latincantor(measured from records)
(i) ‘choirmaster’ or ‘village schoolmaster’, from German Kantor, from Latin cantor ‘singer’; (ii) ‘Jewish cantor’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kantor is read(measured from records)
Kantor 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.
- English70%
(i) ‘choirmaster’ or ‘village schoolmaster’, from German Kantor, from Latin cantor ‘singer’; (ii) ‘Jewish cantor’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Czech9.5%
schoolmaster, teacher
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Kantor 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 | — | 3,982 | 1 in 84K | 4K | Kantor | 333 |
| PL Poland | — | 3,133 | 1 in 12K | 1.6K | — | 1 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 1,310 | 1 in 8.2K | 1.3K | — | 2 |
| HU Hungary | #307 | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Kantor | 71 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 99K | — | Kantor | 77 |
| SK Slovakia | — | 365 | 1 in 15K | 365 | Kántor | 16 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Kantor | 39 |
3,982 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; dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census). 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)
Kantor 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, Latinized; perhaps from singer/church cantor
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Polish, cantor (singer, especially someone who takes a special role of singing or song leading at a ceremony)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, occupational name for a cantor
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Indonesian, office, a room, set of rooms, or building used for non-manual work
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)
- Jacob Robert Kantorb. 1888USAmerican psychologist
- MacKinlay Kantorb. 1904USAmerican journalist, novelist and screenwriter (1904-1977)
- Friedrich Torbergb. 1908ATnot in their usual nameCzech publicist and writer (1908–1979)
- Tadeusz Kantorb. 1915PLPolish artist (1915–1990)
- Anna Kantorb. 1923RURussian music educator and pianist (1923–2021)
- Isaiah Kantorb. 1936RURussian mathematician
- Mickey Kantorb. 1939USAmerican businessman
- Jodi Kantorb. 1975USAmerican journalist
- Nicolas Kantorb. 1983DEGerman photographer and actor
- Adam Kantorb. 1986USAmerican 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 34 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 4K | #8,322 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.8K | #8,044 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.7K | #8,486 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 1.6K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 1.6K | #1,768 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 1.5K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 1.5K | #1,881 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 1.3K | #993 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 1.3K | #985 |
| SK Slovakia | JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census) | 1995 | 208 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
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 Kantor mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘choirmaster’ or ‘village schoolmaster’, from German Kantor, from Latin cantor ‘singer’; (ii) ‘Jewish cantor’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Kantor?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkæntɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kantor have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.0 thousand people named Kantor, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kantor.
- Where is Kantor most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kantor is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 8.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kantor?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,982 people named Kantor in 2010, about 1 in 84 thousand residents.
- How common is Kantor compared with other names?
- In Hungary, Kantor is the 307th most common surname of 88,284 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kantor?
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/kantorThe 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, “Kantor” — the 307th most common surname in Hungary. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.