Kraft
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kraft is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In English, recorded as From a medieval German, Danish and Jewish nickname for a strong man, from German/Danish kraft ‘strength’.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.7K(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 5.8K
- SESweden1 in 6.5K
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 Kraft 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)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 456 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.7K (inferred from the name graph)
31,452 named Craft, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Craft in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 1 more.
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 a medieval German, Danish and Jewish nickname for a strong man, from German/Danish kraft ‘strength’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kraft is read(measured from records)
Kraft 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.
- English69%
From a medieval German, Danish and Jewish nickname for a strong man, from German/Danish kraft ‘strength’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German17%
trait surname: strength, vigor; bearer count not printed on this line
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
from ahd. craft; later from crefting, craftheri; nd. kracht
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
mic nickname for a strong man, from Ger. Kraft or Dan. kraft strength (OHG kraft). The Ger. and Dan. names possibly also derive from a late survival of the OHG byname Chrafto ‘Strong’ or its ON cogn. Kraptr. Var.: Ger.: Krafft. Cogn.: Low Ger.: Kracht.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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 in the world(measured from records)
Kraft 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 | #612 | 31,452as Craft | 1 in 11K | 31K | Craft | 456 |
| DE Germany | #128 | ≈29,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | listed | Kraft | 205 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,200 est. | ≈1 in 16K | listed | Craft | 161 |
| CA Canada | #729 | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Craft | 125 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Craft | 15 |
| SE Sweden | #872 | 1,573 | 1 in 6.5K | 1.6K | Kraft | 51 |
| AT Austria | #462 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 5.8K | — | Kraft | 71 |
| FI Finland | — | 723 | 1 in 7.7K | 723 | Kraft | 13 |
| NO Norway | — | 660 | 1 in 8.3K | 660 | Kraft | 38 |
31,452 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; the dfa-band-2 register; the hanks-dictionary-surnames-1988 register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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)
Kraft is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Exists in the district of Under Rhine, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
nickname for a strong man, from Old High German kraft, German Kraft ‘strength’, ‘power’. The Swedish name probably originated as a soldier’s name. In part the German and Danish names possibly also derive from a late survival of Ae same word used as a byname. Old High German Chraft(o). Old Norse Kraptr.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
- Adam Kraftb. 1450DEGerman sculptor (15. century)
- Louis Crato of Nassau-Saarbrückenb. 1663DEnot in their usual nameCount of Nassau-Saarbrücken (1677-1713)
- James Lewis Kraftb. 1874CACanadian-American businessman
- Victor Kraftb. 1880ATAustrian philosopher (1880–1975)
- Christopher C. Kraftb. 1924USAmerican aerospace engineer (1924–2019)
- Robert Kraftb. 1927USAmerican astronomer (1927-2015)
- Robert K. Kraftb. 1941USAmerican businessman and philanthropist
- Hannelore Kraftb. 1961DEGerman politician
- Thomas Kraftb. 1988DEGerman footballer
- Stefan Kraftb. 1993ATAustrian ski jumper
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 41 sources across 22 countries.
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Kraft mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval German, Danish and Jewish nickname for a strong man, from German/Danish kraft ‘strength’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Kraft?
- In the etymology graph, Craft is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Kraft have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 31 thousand people named Craft, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Kraft?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 1,573 people named Kraft, about 1 in 6.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Kraft compared with other names?
- In the United States, Kraft is the 612th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kraft?
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/kraftThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Kraft” — the 612th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.