Kleen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German surname, Low German variant of Klein; personal characteristic: 'small/short', nickname for a small-statured person
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɫin/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kleen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 85K(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 176K
- FIFinland1 in 180K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 21 (measured from records)
- 1 in 85K (inferred from the name graph)
439 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
German surname, Low German variant of Klein; personal characteristic: 'small/short', nickname for a small-statured person.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kleen 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 | 439 | 1 in 758K | 558 | Kleen | 16 |
| NL Netherlands | 204 | 1 in 85K | 204 | — | 2 |
| SE Sweden | 58 | 1 in 176K | 58 | — | 1 |
| FI Finland | 31 | 1 in 180K | 31 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | 31 | 1 in 6.8M | 31 | — | 4 |
| CH Switzerland | 3 | 1 in 2.8M | 3 | — | 1 |
439 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 2000; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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)
Kleen 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 German, Übername zu mhd. kurz, mnd. kort ‘kurz, klein’; Bearer count: 705.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Aus dem Übernamen zu klein: persönliches Merkmal, meist kleiner Wuchs; teils auch jung/Kind.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
North German form of Klein.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In hrx, little (small in size)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In gmw-cfr, little; small
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)
- Richard Kleenb. 1841SESwedish jurist (1841-1923)
- Emil Kleenb. 1847SESwedish physician (1847–1923)
- Tyra Kleenb. 1874SESwedish artist and author (1874-1951)
- Else Kleenb. 1882SESwedish journalist
- Werner Kleenb. 1907DEGerman physicist (1907–1991)
- Lars Kleenb. 1941SESwedish sculptor (born 1941)
- Martin Kleenb. 1965DEGerman author
- Michael Kleenb. 1981USAmerican folklorist
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 20 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 558 | #37,534 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 507 | #45,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 439 | #48,160 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 204 | #10,223 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 58 | #11,261 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 31 | #145,687 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 31 | #33,894 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3 | #154,370 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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)
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 Kleen mean, and where does it come from?
- German surname, Low German variant of Klein; personal characteristic: 'small/short', nickname for a small-statured person. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- How do you pronounce Kleen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɫin/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kleen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 439 people named Kleen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kleen.
- Where is Kleen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kleen is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 85 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Kleen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 439 people named Kleen in 2010, about 1 in 758 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kleen?
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/kleenThe 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, “Kleen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.