Kluge
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: German surname from a personal characteristic: 'klug' = clever, smart. 7046 bearer tokens (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/kluːd͡ʒ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Kluge is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 4.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NONorway1 in 17K
- EEEstonia≈1 in 35K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 174 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈20,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Kluge
- English:/kluːd͡ʒ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)German surname from a personal characteristic: 'klug' = clever, smart. 7046 bearer tokens.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kluge is read
(measured from records)Kluge is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German48%
German surname from a personal characteristic: 'klug' = clever, smart. 7046 bearer tokens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
nickname from Middle High German Muoc ‘noble’, ‘gentle’, ‘refined’. Later the meaning changed to ‘understanding’, ‘learned’, ‘experienced’ , and subsequently ‘clever’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Übername zu mhd./nhd. klug 'weise, clever'; Berufsbezug nicht, Persönlichkeitsmerkmal.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Familienname nach persönlichem Merkmal: zu dt. „klug“ = intelligent, verständig; 7046 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Personenmerkmal: klug, verständig, gescheit (Wesensart).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- English38%
Something that should not work, but does.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where the surname Kluge is found
(measured from records)Kluge 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #340 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | — | Kluge | 156 |
| US United States | — | 2,216 | 1 in 150K | 2.2K | Kluge | 174 |
| BR Brazil | — | 877 | 1 in 241K | 877 | — | 2 |
| PL Poland | — | 647 | 1 in 59K | 343 | Kluge | 2 |
| NO Norway | — | 314 | 1 in 17K | 314 | — | 10 |
| DK Denmark | — | 125 | 1 in 47K | 125 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈39 est. | ≈1 in 35K | 13 | — | 4 |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)- Günther von Klugeb. 1882PLGerman general (1882-1944)
- John Klugeb. 1914USGerman-American businessman
- Alexander Klugeb. 1932DEGerman writer, philosopher, academic and film director (1932–2026)
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)31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kluge mean, and where does it come from?
- German surname from a personal characteristic: 'klug' = clever, smart. 7046 bearer tokens. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- How do you pronounce Kluge?
- In English /kluːd͡ʒ/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kluge?
- Mondonomo estimates about 20 thousand people named Kluge in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kluge. After it come United States, Brazil, Poland and Norway; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kluge?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,216 people named Kluge in 2010, about 1 in 150 thousand residents.
- How common is Kluge compared with other names?
- In Germany, Kluge is the 340th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kluge?
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/klugeThe 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, “Kluge” — the 340th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.