Knobel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Middle High German kniibel, probably a nickname in the sense ‘ankle’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/knobel/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated
Knobel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 7.1K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 43K
- NONorway1 in 91K
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 Knobel 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 214 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.1K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,900 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Knoebel in PK Pakistan.
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 kniibel, probably a nickname in the sense ‘ankle’. However, the term also denotes a rounded elevation and may therefore also be a topographic name for someone who lived by a knoll. Knobel is also an archaic word for a servant.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Knobel 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 | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Knobel | 101 |
| US United States | — | 1,237 | 1 in 269K | 1.2K | Knobel | 214 |
| CH Switzerland | #773 | 1,178 | 1 in 7.1K | 1.2K | Knobel | 55 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈540 est. | ≈1 in 465K | — | Knoebel | 1 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈300 est. | ≈1 in 214K | — | Knobel | 17 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈93 est. | ≈1 in 98K | — | Knobel | 17 |
| NO Norway | — | 60 | 1 in 91K | 60 | — | 8 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | — | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Knobel | 1 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)Knobel 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.
ornamental name from German Knobel ‘knot’, ‘node’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from Yiddish knobl ‘garlic’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In enm, alternative form of knoble
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)- August Wilhelm Knobelb. 1807DEGerman theologian (1807–1863)
- Hilarius Knobelb. 1830CHSwiss architect (1830-1891)
- Edward Knobelb. 1841GBBritish astronomer (1841–1930)
- Fridolin Marinus Knobelb. 1857NLDutch politician (1857-1933)
- Kaspar Knobelb. 1882CHSwiss politician (1882-1953)
- George Knobelb. 1922NLDutch football manager (1922–2012)
- Daniel Knobelb. 1936ZASouth African general and Doctor
- Esther Knobelb. 1949PLjewelry designer (born 1949)
- Hanspeter Knobelb. 1963CHSwiss biathlete
- Rolf Knobelb. 1963CHSwiss physicist and chess player
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)24 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Knobel mean, and where does it come from?
- from Middle High German kniibel, probably a nickname in the sense ‘ankle’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Knobel?
- In Spanish /knobel/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Knobel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 thousand people named Knobel in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled knobel.
- Where is Knobel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Knobel is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 7.1 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Knobel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,237 people named Knobel in 2010, about 1 in 269 thousand residents.
- How common is Knobel compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Knobel is the 773rd most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Knobel?
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/knobelThe 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, “Knobel” — the 773rd most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.