Koester

surname · Latin script

Meaning: 1. Low German form of Kiister ‘sexton’ (see Kuster) (Dictionary of American Family Names)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 11 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Koester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 7,380 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. In Belize it is the 55th most common surname.

  • BZBelize≈1 in 7.4Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • AGAntigua & Barbuda≈1 in 17Kfew records
  • DEGermany≈1 in 21K

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 Koester 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)

7,380 people, 2010

Record sources
332 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Belize, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Køster in DK Denmark.

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)

1. Low German form of Kiister ‘sexton’ (see Kuster). 2. variant of Koster.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Koester is found

(measured from records)

Koester 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.

Where Koester is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7,3801 in 45K7.4KKoester332
DE Germany—≈4,100 est.≈1 in 21Klisted—4
ZA South Africa—≈880 est.≈1 in 73K—Koester10
CA Canada—≈790 est.≈1 in 52K—Koester47
GB United Kingdom—≈760 est.≈1 in 91K—Koester36
DK Denmark—306as Køster1 in 19K306Køster36
BZ Belize#55≈57 est.≈1 in 7.4K—Koester1
AG Antigua & Barbuda#744≈5 est.≈1 in 17K—Koester1

7,380 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; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); the dfa-band-5 register. 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Koester is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname41 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Koster, Köster, Köester, Kõster, Kôster

  • Spanish surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, France, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Köester, Koéster

  • Russian surname23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, United States, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Кестер, Костера, Koster, Костер, Kester

39 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
1800185019001950Hans von Koester, b. 1844Frank Koester, b. 1876Helmut Koester, b. 1926
  • Hans von Koesterb. 1844DEGerman admiral (1844-1928)
  • Frank Koesterb. 1876USGerman-American engineer, urban planner & writer (1876–1927)
  • Helmut Koesterb. 1926DEGerman-born American scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity (1926-2016)

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)
FormalDear Koester,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 11 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Koester come from?
1. Low German form of Kiister ‘sexton’ (see Kuster). 2. variant of Koster. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
What does the name Koester mean?
Recorded meaning: 1. Low German form of Kiister ‘sexton’ (see Kuster).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Koester?
In the United States, the national register counted about 7.4 thousand people named Koester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled koester. After it come Germany, South Africa, Canada and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Koester?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,380 people named Koester in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
How common is Koester compared with other names?
In Belize, Koester is the 55th most common surname of 11,408 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Koester?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/koester

The 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, “Koester” — ranked 4609th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Koester parses inside a full name →