Kurtz
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname for someone who was short in stature, from Middle High German kur(t)z, German kurz ‘short’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Kurtz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 14K(measured from records)
- CACanada≈1 in 16K
- GBUnited Kingdom≈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). 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
- 434 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 11K (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
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)
nickname for someone who was short in stature, from Middle High German kur(t)z, German kurz ‘short’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kurtz 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 | — | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Kurtz | 2 |
| US United States | — | 24,216 | 1 in 14K | 24K | Kurtz | 434 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Kurtz | 89 |
| BR Brazil | — | 2,823 | 1 in 75K | 2.8K | — | 4 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈2,600 est. | ≈1 in 41K | — | Kurtz | 9 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Kurtz | 139 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈450 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Kurtz | 20 |
| PS Palestine | #598 | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 28K | — | Kurtz | 2 |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)
Kurtz 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.
In German, obsolete spelling of kurz
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Beruf: nein; Übername nach Körpergröße/äußerem Merkmal „kurz/kleinwüchsig“; Varianten mit Apokope (Kur(t)z(e)).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
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)
- Efrem Kurtzb. 1900RURussian conductor (1900–1995)
- Frank Kurtzb. 1911USDiver and Air Force officer
- Paul Kurtzb. 1925USAmerican professor of philosophy (1925-2012)
- Thomas E. Kurtzb. 1928USAmerican computer scientist and educator (1928–2024)
- Gary Kurtzb. 1940USAmerican film producer (1940-2018)
- Swoosie Kurtzb. 1944USAmerican actress (born 1944)
- Katherine Kurtzb. 1944USAmerican fantasy writer
- Howard Kurtzb. 1953USAmerican journalist
- George Kurtzb. 1970USAmerican billionaire businessman
- Marcia Jean Kurtzb. 2000USactress
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 32 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 24K | #1,476 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 24K | #1,479 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 23K | #1,383 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.8K | #3,617 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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)
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 Kurtz mean, and where does it come from?
- nickname for someone who was short in stature, from Middle High German kur(t)z, German kurz ‘short’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Kurtz have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 106 thousand people named Kurtz in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kurtz.
- How common is the name Kurtz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 24,216 people named Kurtz in 2010, about 1 in 14 thousand residents.
- How common is Kurtz compared with other names?
- In Palestine, Kurtz is the 598th most common surname of 17,903 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kurtz?
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/kurtzThe 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, “Kurtz” — the 598th most common surname in Palestine. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.