Kästner
surname · Latin script
Meaning: occupation: chest-maker or treasurer/keeper (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries
Kästner is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Kästner is also written คาสเนอร in Thai.
- ATAustria≈1 in 3K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 7.7K
- AGAntigua & Barbuda≈1 in 13Kfew records
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 Kästner itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 313 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Kästner in other scripts: Thai
(measured from records)Locally spelled Kastner in US United States, DE Germany, AT Austria and 3 more and Kaestner in UY Uruguay.
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)occupation: chest-maker or treasurer/keeper
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Kästner is found
(measured from records)Kästner 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 | #341 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 7.7K | listed | Kastner | 152 |
| US United States | — | 4,136 | 1 in 80K | 4.1K | Kastner | 313 |
| AT Austria | #198 | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Kastner | 84 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 115K | listed | Kastner | 58 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 69K | — | Kastner | 69 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 459 | 1 in 23K | 460 | — | 2 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 68as Kaestner | 1 in 50K | 68 | Kaestner | 8 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #509 | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Kastner | 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; MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)Kästner 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, Typ mit ä/ae-Vokalismus; Belegformen Kästner, Käster. Bearer count: 3032.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In Croatian, njemački novinar, satiričar, romanopisac i pjesnik, osobito poznat po svojim knjigama za djecu ( Emil i detektivi , Tonček i Točkica , Blizanke , Trojica u snijegu ); najpopularnije pjesničko djelo Kućna apoteka lirike objavljeno 1936. u Zürichu, jer su mu sva djela za vrijeme nacizma u Trećem Reichu bila zabranjena
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)- Abraham Gotthelf Kästnerb. 1719DEGerman mathematician (1719–1800)
- Erich Kästnerb. 1899DEGerman children's writer (1899–1974)
- Detlef Kästnerb. 1958DEboxer
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)12 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Kästner mean, and where does it come from?
- occupation: chest-maker or treasurer/keeper Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Kästner?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Kästner in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kastner. After it come United States, Austria, United Kingdom and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Kästner?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,136 people named Kästner in 2010, about 1 in 80 thousand residents.
- How common is Kästner compared with other names?
- In Germany, Kästner is the 341st most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kästner?
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/k%C3%A4stnerThe 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, “Kästner” — the 341st most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.