Kettner

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Kettner is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: variant of the Austrian topographic name Kother, from Middle High German kote ‘hut’, ‘day laborer’s cottage’ (see Koth, Kott).

rarermore common
  • DEGermany
  • USUnited States
  • ATAustria

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)

variant of the Austrian topographic name Kother, from Middle High German kote ‘hut’, ‘day laborer’s cottage’ (see Koth, Kott).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

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)

Kettner is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • from German Kettner, or Kotner, or alternatively a habitational name for someone from a place called Chotyne (German Ketten).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • habitational name for someone from any of several places in Germany named Ketten.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • variant of Ketterer, occupational name for a chain maker.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

18001850190019502000Theodor Kettner, b. 1833William Kettner, b. 1864Friedrich Kettner, b. 1886Hans Kettner, b. 1919Gerhard Kettner, b. 1928Bernd-Ulrich Kettner, b. 1939Matthias Kettner, b. 1955Anna Kettner, b. 1961Michelle Kettner, b. 1973Wilhelm Albert Kettner, b. 2000

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 24 sources across 15 countries.

Official registers attesting Kettner
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.4K#19,628
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.3K#20,911
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.3K#19,840
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—368#4,347
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—366#3,789
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—148#46,898
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202482#12,870
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—47#11,104
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—46#13,434
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202641—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—41#57,302
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202633—

Reference works 4

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 Kettner mean, and where does it come from?
variant of the Austrian topographic name Kother, from Middle High German kote ‘hut’, ‘day laborer’s cottage’ (see Koth, Kott). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Kettner have the most bearers?
Kettner is most frequently recorded in the United States.

What do you want to know about Kettner?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kettner

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Kettner”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Kettner parses inside a full name →