Kier
surname · Latin script
Meaning: occupational name for a cowherd, Chuyger in the Tyrolean dialect, from KUhe ‘cows’ (plural of Kuh) + -er suffix of agent nouns
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɪɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kier is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 120K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 192K
- VCSt. Vincent & Grenadines1 in 34K
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
- 261 (measured from records)
- 1 in 34K (inferred from the name graph)
2,780 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
occupational name for a cowherd, Chuyger in the Tyrolean dialect, from KUhe ‘cows’ (plural of Kuh) + -er suffix of agent nouns.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kier 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 | — | 2,780 | 1 in 120K | 2.8K | Kier | 261 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 192K | 3 | Kier | 110 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 200K | — | Kier | 8 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 236K | 2 | Kier | 55 |
| DK Denmark | — | 155 | 1 in 38K | 155 | — | — |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 3 | 1 in 34K | 3 | — | — |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 194K | 1 | — | — |
| BB Barbados | #974 | — | — | — | Kier | 2 |
2,780 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
Kier 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 English, A bleaching vat.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Tyrolean, from Chüyger 'cowherd'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
possibly a variant spelling of Kear.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Luxembourgish, second-person singular imperative of kieren
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Dutch, fissure, narrow opening
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)
- Samuel Kierb. 1813American inventor and businessman who is credited with founding the American petroleum refining industry
- Aage Kierb. 1888DKDanish chess player
- Anna Patrickb. 1910CAnot in their usual namebadminton player
- Porter Martin Kierb. 1927USauthor, writer, zoologist, taxon author
- Herfrid Kierb. 1935ATAustrian musicologist
- Hiltrud Kierb. 1937ATAustrian art historian
- Volker Kierb. 1941ATAustrian politician
- Udo Kierb. 1944DEGerman actor (1944–2025)
- Christopher Kierb. 1959CACanadian artist
- Justin Kierb. 1998USAmerican basketball player (born 1998)
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 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,348 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2K | #14,127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #15,207 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 155 | #3,424 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 3 | #259 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
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 Kier mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name for a cowherd, Chuyger in the Tyrolean dialect, from KUhe ‘cows’ (plural of Kuh) + -er suffix of agent nouns. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kier?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɪɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kier have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Kier, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kier.
- Where is Kier most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kier is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 34 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kier?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,780 people named Kier in 2010, about 1 in 120 thousand residents.
- How common is Kier compared with other names?
- In Barbados, Kier is the 974th most common surname of 11,500 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kier?
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/kierThe 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, “Kier” — the 974th most common surname in Barbados. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.