Kliger
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname from an inflected form ofYiddish dialect k/ig ‘clever’, ‘wise’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɫɪɡɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kliger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ILIsrael1 in 16Kas קליגר(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 36Kas Klinger
- DEGermany≈1 in 50Kas Kluger
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 Kliger 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
- 194 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 334K (inferred from the name graph)
9,179 named Klinger, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kluger in US United States, DE Germany, קליגר in IL Israel, PL Poland and קלינגר in RO Romania, LB Lebanon.
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)
nickname from an inflected form ofYiddish dialect k/ig ‘clever’, ‘wise’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kliger 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 | — | 9,179as Klinger | 1 in 36K | 9.3K | Kluger | 194 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 50K | listed | Kluger | 102 |
| RO Romania | #713 | ≈970 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | קלינגר | 2 |
| PL Poland | — | 828as Klinger | 1 in 46K | 414 | קליגר | 3 |
| IL Israel | #797 | 528as קליגר | 1 in 16K | 528 | קליגר | 37 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 214as Klinger | 1 in 39K | 214 | — | 4 |
| LB Lebanon | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | קלינגר | 1 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 334K | — | Kliger | 8 |
9,179 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling klinger. 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; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Noah Kliegerb. 1926ILnot in their usual nameIsraeli journalist
- David S Kligerb. 1943researcher (ORCID 0000-0003-4083-7369)
- Idit Kligerfilm producer
- Doron KligerILIsraeli economist
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 16 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 179 | #106,101 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 174 | #103,181 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 172 | #97,848 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 12 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 12 | #120,940 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 11 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 11 | #127,726 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Kliger mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname from an inflected form ofYiddish dialect k/ig ‘clever’, ‘wise’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kliger?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɫɪɡɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Kliger have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 9.2 thousand people named Klinger, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Kliger?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,179 people named Klinger in 2010, about 1 in 36 thousand residents.
- How common is Kliger compared with other names?
- In Romania, Kliger is the 713th most common surname of 78,699 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kliger?
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/kligerThe 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, “Kliger” — the 713th most common surname in Romania. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.