Krebs
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) Either a crab seller/catcher or a medieval German or Swiss German nickname for someone thought to resemble a crab; (ii) an invented Jewish name based on German Krebs ‘crab’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkɹɛbz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Krebs is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 30K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 39K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.4K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 359 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈23,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
(i) Either a crab seller/catcher or a medieval German or Swiss German nickname for someone thought to resemble a crab; (ii) an invented Jewish name based on German Krebs ‘crab’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Krebs is read(measured from records)
Krebs is one spelling over 3 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.
- English61%
(i) Either a crab seller/catcher or a medieval German or Swiss German nickname for someone thought to resemble a crab; (ii) an invented Jewish name based on German Krebs ‘crab’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German21%
cancer
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
crustacean, crab, crayfish
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Typus mit Konsonantenvarianz b/p/f in Namen; 9476 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
- French5.8%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Krebs in French.
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)
Krebs 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 61K | — | Krebs | 4 |
| US United States | — | 11,067 | 1 in 30K | 11K | Krebs | 359 |
| CH Switzerland | #965 | 3,452 | 1 in 2.4K | 3.5K | Krebs | 37 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,300 est. | ≈1 in 29K | 261 | — | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Krebs | 82 |
| DK Denmark | #746 | 533 | 1 in 11K | 533 | Krebs | 65 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 290 | 1 in 7.3K | 290 | — | 6 |
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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); 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)
Krebs 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.
metonymic occupational name for a catcher or seller of crabs or shellfish or a nickname for someone thought to resemble a crab, perhaps because they had a peculiar gait. The name was certainly standardized from older variants like Krevetes or Krebiss which reflect Middle Low German crevet ‘crab’, ‘shrimp’, as well as Middle High German krebez.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
ornamental name from German Krebs ‘crab’ (see 1).
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)
- Johann Ludwig Krebsb. 1713DEGerman composer and musician
- Emil Krebsb. 1867DEGerman polyglot and sinologist (1867–1930)
- Otto Krebsb. 1873DEGerman entrepreneur and art collector, Nazi party member (1873-1941)
- Hans Krebsb. 1888DECzechoslovak member of Czechoslovak national parliament and German nation politician (1888-1947)
- Hans Krebsb. 1898DEGerman general
- Hans Adolf Krebsb. 1900DEGerman-British biochemist (1900-1981)
- Madame Grèsb. 1903FRnot in their usual nameFrench grand couturier (1903–1993)
- Edwin G. Krebsb. 1918USAmerican biochemist (1918–2009)
- Brian Krebsb. 1972USAmerican journalist specializing in cybersecurity
- Christopher C. Krebsb. 1977USAmerican attorney and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
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)
Attested in 36 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,260 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #3,034 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,279 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 3.5K | #199 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 533 | #796 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 515 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 391 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 372 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 367 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 339 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 335 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 305 | — |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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 Krebs mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Either a crab seller/catcher or a medieval German or Swiss German nickname for someone thought to resemble a crab; (ii) an invented Jewish name based on German Krebs ‘crab’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Krebs?
- In the etymology graph, Kreeft is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Krebs?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɹɛbz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Krebs have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 23 thousand people named Krebs in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled krebs.
- Where is Krebs most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Krebs is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 2.4 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Krebs?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,067 people named Krebs in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
- How common is Krebs compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Krebs is the 746th most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Krebs?
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/krebsThe 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, “Krebs” — the 746th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.