Kobel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from 'rock cavity'; also 'day-laborer house, stable' (Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈkoːbl̩/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Kobel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country: 1,418 people, counted by BFS in 2024.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 5.9K(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 56K
- DEGermany≈1 in 71K
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 Kobel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.
- Switzerland (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 189 (measured from records)
- 1 in 5.9K (inferred from the name graph)
1,418 people, 2024
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 Koebel in BB Barbados, FR France.
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.
How to pronounce Kobel
- German:/ˈkoːbl̩/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)from 'rock cavity'; also 'day-laborer house, stable'
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kobel is found
(measured from records)Kobel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | #674 | 1,418 | 1 in 5.9K | 1.4K | Kobel | 43 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Kobel | 78 |
| US United States | — | 870 | 1 in 382K | 957 | Kobel | 189 |
| PL Poland | — | 679 | 1 in 56K | 345 | Kobel | 1 |
| FR France | — | ≈390 est. | ≈1 in 176K | 52 | Koebel | 3 |
| OM Oman | — | ≈40 est. | ≈1 in 133K | — | Kobel | 3 |
| BB Barbados | #636 | ≈15 est. | ≈1 in 19K | — | Koebel | 2 |
1,418 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Kobel 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, 1. topographic name from Middle High German kobel ‘rock’, ‘gorge’. 2. eastern German habitational name for someone from any of several places, mainly in Silesia, of Slavic origin, e.g. Kobel, Kobein, Koblau, which are named from Slavic kobyla ‘mare’. 3. from Kobel ‘laborer’s cottage’, ‘hut’, hence, by metonymy, a bondsman or serf.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, The space under the feet in carriages
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Russian, var of Kobel'.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
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)- Stefan Kobelb. 1974CHvolleyball player
- Craig Kobelb. 1982USAmerican football player
- Gregor Kobelb. 1997CHSwiss footballer (born 1997)
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)21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kobel mean, and where does it come from?
- from 'rock cavity'; also 'day-laborer house, stable' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Kobel?
- In German /ˈkoːbl̩/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kobel?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Kobel, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kobel. After it come Germany, United States, Poland and France; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Kobel most common?
- Kobel is densest in Switzerland, where the national register counts about 1 in 5.9 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Kobel?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 1,418 people named Kobel in 2024, about 1 in 5.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Kobel compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Kobel is the 674th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kobel?
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/kobelThe 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, “Kobel” — ranked 753rd in Switzerland (BFS, 2024). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.