Kelter
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Archaic form of kilter (“(good) condition, form, or order; fettle”)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/kɛltɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kelter is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- DEGermany
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from Middle High German kelter, kalter ‘wine press’ (Latin calcatura), hence a topographic name or a metonymic occupational name for a vintner or the overseer of a wine press.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kelter is read
(measured from records)Kelter 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.
- English76%
Archaic form of kilter (“(good) condition, form, or order; fettle”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German11%
from Middle High German kelter, kalter ‘wine press’ (Latin calcatura), hence a topographic name or a metonymic occupational name for a vintner or the overseer of a wine press.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
winepress
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)Kelter is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, indefinite plural of kelt
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)- Ernst Kelterb. 1900DEformer Lord Mayor of Duisburg
- Theodor Kelterb. 1907DEGerman architect (1907-1982)
- Hubert Kelterb. 1909DEGerman economist, in-house counsel at Hamburg's Chamber of Commerce, head of Commerzbibliothek Hamburg and author
- Bernadette Kelterb. 1931USAmerican religious sister
- Jochen Kelterb. 1946DESwiss author
- Alev Kelterb. 1991USAmerican rugby player
- Malena Kelterb. 2000DEGerman association football player
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)19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 443 | #45,482 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 435 | #51,662 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 394 | #52,619 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 31 | #33,881 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 11 | #37,076 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 9 | #64,909 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 8 | #134,434 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 5 | #63,553 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 4 | #118,617 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #25,940 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- Where does the name Kelter come from?
- from Middle High German kelter, kalter ‘wine press’ (Latin calcatura), hence a topographic name or a metonymic occupational name for a vintner or the overseer of a wine press. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kelter?
- A machine transcription gives /kɛltɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Kelter mean?
- In English, Archaic form of kilter (“(good) condition, form, or order; fettle”).
- In which country does Kelter have the most bearers?
- Kelter is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Kelter?
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/kelterThe 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, “Kelter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.