Kuhl
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname from a dwelling/landscape feature; from mnd
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈkəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Kuhl is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 10K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 42K
- USUnited States1 in 57K
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 Kuhl 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 325 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
≈7,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Kühl in DE Germany, 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)
Toponymic surname from a dwelling/landscape feature; from mnd. kūle / mhd. kūle ‘Kuhle, Vertiefung’. Bearer count: 2979.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kuhl 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 | #318 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 10K | listed | Kühl | 139 |
| US United States | — | 5,872 | 1 in 57K | 5.9K | Kuhl | 325 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,254 | 1 in 94K | 2.3K | — | 2 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 299K | — | Kuhl | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈890 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Kuhl | 79 |
| HU Hungary | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Kuhl | 17 |
| DK Denmark | — | 271 | 1 in 22K | 271 | Kühl | 36 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 42K | — | Kuhl | 9 |
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-4 register; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Kuhl 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, by a hollow or depression, MLG kule, or habitation name from one of the numerous minor places in N Germany named with this word. The name has been altered by folketymological association with the High Ger. word kuhl cool (MHG kiiele). Vars.: Kuhl(e). Kiihlen; Kuhl(e)mann, Kulemann. Kuhn see Konrad Kuijpers see Cooper Vars.: Krutak, Krutsky.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In German, Toponymic surname from SiedlungsN like Kuhle(n), Kuhla, Kuhlenkamp; type totals 2979 tokens. Bearers: Kuhl(e) 2624+355.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In gmw-ecg, coal
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Heinrich Kuhlb. 1797DEGerman naturalist and zoologist (1797–1821)
- David E. Kuhlb. 1929USAmerican scientist (1929–2017)
- Randy Kuhlb. 1943USAmerican politician (born 1943)
- Patricia K. Kuhlb. 1946USAmerican professor of speech and hearing sciences
- Marcus Kuhlb. 1956DEGerman ice hockey player
- Martin Kuhlb. 1965GBEnglish footballer (born 1965)
- Annika Kuhlb. 1975DEGerman actress
- Santiago Kuhlb. 1981ARArgentine footballer
- Chad Kuhlb. 1992USAmerican baseball player
- Aaron Kuhlb. 1996GBfootballer (born 1996)
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 30 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.9K | #5,877 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.8K | #5,730 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.7K | #5,622 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.3K | #4,371 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 6 | #54,828 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 4 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
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
- Where does the name Kuhl come from?
- Toponymic surname from a dwelling/landscape feature; from mnd. kūle / mhd. kūle ‘Kuhle, Vertiefung’. Bearer count: 2979. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Kuhl?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Kuhl mean?
- Recorded meaning: Toponymic surname from a dwelling/landscape feature; from mnd.
- In which country does Kuhl have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 7.8 thousand people named Kuhl in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kühl.
- How common is the name Kuhl?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,872 people named Kuhl in 2010, about 1 in 57 thousand residents.
- How common is Kuhl compared with other names?
- In Germany, Kuhl is the 318th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kuhl?
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/kuhlThe 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, “Kuhl” — the 318th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.