Kimmel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Middle High German kumin, German Kiimmel ‘caraway’ (related to Latin cuminum, a word of Oriental origin, like the plant itself), hence a metonymic occupational name for a spicer, literally a supp
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kimmel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 26K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 32K
- CACanada≈1 in 42K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 387 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.2K (inferred from the name graph)
10,528 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Estonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 Middle High German kumin, German Kiimmel ‘caraway’ (related to Latin cuminum, a word of Oriental origin, like the plant itself), hence a metonymic occupational name for a spicer, literally a supplier of caraway seeds. Compare Caraway, also Lorber and Zimet.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kimmel 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 | 10,528 | 1 in 32K | 11K | Kimmel | 387 |
| DE Germany | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Kimmel | 105 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 50K | — | Kimmel | 62 |
| CA Canada | ≈900 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Kimmel | 88 |
| IT Italy | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 76K | — | Kimmel | 8 |
| EE Estonia | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 8.2K | 150 | Kimmel | 11 |
| LB Lebanon | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Kimmel | 1 |
10,528 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; the ee-stat-nimed register. 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)
Kimmel 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.
In German, Berufsname zu Kümmel 'Kümmel, Gewürz'; 1330 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Berufsname oder Personalname-Variante; Verbreitung u.a. als Nest in 975 Kolitzheim, 767 Germersheim und 362 Bad Hersfeld. Bearer count: 23 Tokens (975 Kolitzheim), 34 Tokens (767 Germersheim), 21 Tokens (362 Bad Hersfeld).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In Luxembourgish, caraway
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)
- Husband Kimmelb. 1882USUnited States admiral (1882-1968)
- Martin Kimmelb. 1916USAmerican businessman
- Sidney Kimmelb. 1928USAmerican businessman and philanthropist
- Eric Kimmelb. 1946USAmerican writer
- Bruce Kimmelb. 1947USAmerican actor
- Michael Kimmelb. 1951USAmerican sociologist
- Daniel M. Kimmelb. 1955USAmerican film critic
- Jimmy Kimmelb. 1967USAmerican talk show host and comedian (born 1967)
- Jonathan Kimmelb. 1976USAmerican writer, director, and producer
- Tamás Szabó Kimmelb. 1984HUHungarian 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 34 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,396 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 9.8K | #3,340 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.3K | #3,710 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 150 | #394 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 139 | #496 |
| 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
- 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
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 Kimmel mean, and where does it come from?
- from Middle High German kumin, German Kiimmel ‘caraway’ (related to Latin cuminum, a word of Oriental origin, like the plant itself), hence a metonymic occupational name for a spicer, literally a supp… Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Kimmel have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Kimmel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kimmel.
- How common is the name Kimmel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 10,528 people named Kimmel in 2010, about 1 in 32 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kimmel?
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/kimmelThe 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, “Kimmel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.