Kestel
loc · Latin script
Meaning: from ON Oberfranken; Kestler as occupational name 'box/mold maker'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kestel is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 970K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.7M
- ESSpain1 in 4.5M
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 Kestel 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 66 (measured from records)
- 1 in 970K (inferred from the name graph)
343 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Кестель in RU Russia, UA Ukraine, KZ Kazakhstan.
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)
from ON Oberfranken; Kestler as occupational name 'box/mold maker'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kestel 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 | 343 | 1 in 970K | 389 | — | 1 |
| RU Russia | ≈84 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | — | Кестель | 66 |
| UA Ukraine | ≈26 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | — | Кестель | 8 |
| KZ Kazakhstan | ≈20 est. | ≈1 in 952K | — | Кестель | 17 |
| ES Spain | 11 | 1 in 4.5M | 11 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | 5 | 1 in 1.7M | 5 | — | — |
343 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Kestel 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 English, from Kestell, Cornwall; first attested John de Kestel 1297 MinAcctCo.
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, habitational name from Kestle, a place in Cornwall, so named from Cornish castell ‘castle’, ‘village’, ‘rock’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, habitational name from a place so called in Upper Franconia.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Estonian, during
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)
- Heinrich Kestelb. 1864ATAustrian architect
- Etel Kestelb. 1876PLHolocaust victim (born 1876)
- Manzi Kestel-Bauerb. 1877ATAustrian painter
- Josef Kestelb. 1904DEconcentration camp guard (1904-1948)
- Peter Dunnb. 1935AUnot in their usual nameAustralian politician
- Dévora Kestelb. 1950ARArgentine psychologist
- H. G. Kestelb. 1954DEartist, graphic artist, painter and poet
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 14 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 389 | #56,668 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 377 | #51,809 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 343 | #59,017 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 11 | #114,632 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5 | #101,952 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Kestel mean, and where does it come from?
- from ON Oberfranken; Kestler as occupational name 'box/mold maker' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Kestel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 343 people named Kestel, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Kestel most common?
- Kestel is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 970 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kestel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 343 people named Kestel in 2010, about 1 in 970 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kestel?
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/kestelThe 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, “Kestel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.