Kratz
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 1. from a short form of the medieval personal name Pankratz, a vernacular form of Latin Pancratius (see Pankratz), bestowed in honor of St
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 16 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Kratz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 11K(inferred from the name graph)
- SESweden1 in 25K
- JMJamaica≈1 in 44Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 294 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,300 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: 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:
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. from a short form of the medieval personal name Pankratz, a vernacular form of Latin Pancratius (see Pankratz), bestowed in honor of St. Paneras, one of the three ‘ice saints’ martyred under Diocletian. 2. variant of Kraatz 1. 3. from an old personal name formed with Old High German grdtag ‘greedy’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where the surname Kratz is found
(measured from records)Kratz 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 | ≈7,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | listed | Kratz | 135 |
| US United States | 5,231 | 1 in 64K | 5.2K | Kratz | 294 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 89K | — | Kratz | 41 |
| FR France | ≈560 est. | ≈1 in 122K | 75 | — | 3 |
| BR Brazil | 538 | 1 in 394K | 538 | — | 4 |
| SE Sweden | 416 | 1 in 25K | 416 | Kratz | 25 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Kratz | 8 |
| JM Jamaica | ≈64 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Kratz | 1 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 34K | — | Kratz | 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; the dfa-band-1 register; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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)Kratz is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Patronym zu Kurzformen von Pancratius; auch zu mhd. kraz ‘Kratzwunde, Schramme’, vereinzelt evtl. auch Herkunftsname. 2956 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, Zu eingedeutschtem Pankraz; kurz a vorgegeben. Mögliche Konkurrenz zu ahd. Rufname Chrazo oder Siedlungsname Kraatz. 2981 Belege. Karte zeigt a-/aa-Vokalvariation (Kratz vs. Kraatz).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Wahrscheinlich patronymisch zu Rufname Pancratius; teils auch konkurrierende Deutungen. Bearer count not given for this page form.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In German, Patronym zu (lat.) Pancratius; zeigt a/aa-Variation im Haupttonvokalismus. Bearer count: 2981.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
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)- Reinhard Gregor Kratzb. 1957DEGerman theologian
- Wiebke Kratzb. 1966DEGerman costume designer
- Erik Kratzb. 1980USAmerican baseball 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)26 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 16 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kratz mean, and where does it come from?
- 1. from a short form of the medieval personal name Pankratz, a vernacular form of Latin Pancratius (see Pankratz), bestowed in honor of St. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kratz?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.3 thousand people named Kratz in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kratz. After it come United States, United Kingdom, France and Brazil; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kratz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,231 people named Kratz in 2010, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Kratz?
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/kratzThe 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, “Kratz”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.