Lange
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German surname from lang(e) ‘long’; apocope/shortening shows vowel reduction in forms like Lang, Langhe, Langen, Langer
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Lange is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 24th most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 865(inferred from the name graph)
- DKDenmark1 in 1.8K
- ZASouth Africa≈1 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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 459 (measured from records)
- 1 in 153 (inferred from the name graph)
≈93,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Greenland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
German surname from lang(e) ‘long’; apocope/shortening shows vowel reduction in forms like Lang, Langhe, Langen, Langer. No bearer count printed.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lange 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 | #24 | ≈93,000 est. | ≈1 in 865 | listed | Lange | 258 |
| US United States | #998 | 30,984 | 1 in 11K | 31K | Lange | 459 |
| ZA South Africa | #263 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.4K | — | Lange | 87 |
| PL Poland | — | 5,826 | 1 in 6.6K | 3K | Lange | 4 |
| BR Brazil | — | 5,096 | 1 in 42K | 5.1K | — | 3 |
| DK Denmark | #138 | 3,317 | 1 in 1.8K | 3.3K | Lange | 130 |
| NO Norway | #503 | 2,072 | 1 in 2.6K | 2.1K | Lange | 54 |
| GL Greenland | #41 | 376 | 1 in 153 | 376 | Lange | 7 |
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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1). 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)
Lange is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, from a nickname for a tall person; 'tall'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
nickname from ange ‘angel’, with the definite article /’. IJ.l;|j:IJJ:iaThere was a L’Ange in Quebec as early as 1613.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, long, for a long time
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Zu mhd. / nhd. lang ‘groß, lang’; die Karte zeigt die Vokalvarianten im Typ Lange/Lang und Schreibungen mit -e sowie Zusammensetzungen.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
In German, Übername zu mhd./mnd. lanc, lank 'lang, groß'; Belege: Lange 40524, Lang 29890.
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)
- Friedrich-Albert Langeb. 1828DEGerman philosopher and sociologist (1828-1875)
- Christian Lous Langeb. 1869NONorwegian diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1869-1938)
- Dorothea Langeb. 1895USAmerican photojournalist (1895-1965)
- Oskar Langeb. 1904PLPolish economist (1904-1965)
- Rudolf Langeb. 1910DESS officer (1910-1945)
- Hope Langeb. 1933USAmerican actress (1933-2003)
- David Langeb. 1942NZPrime Minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989
- Jessica Langeb. 1949USAmerican actress
- Shania Twainb. 1965CAnot in their usual nameCanadian country music singer and songwriter (born 1965)
- Artie Langeb. 1967USAmerican comedian
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 54 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 31K | #1,132 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 30K | #1,068 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 29K | #1,174 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.1K | #2,216 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3.3K | #113 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 3K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 3K | #791 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 2.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 2.8K | #860 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 2.1K | #447 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 1K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2021 | 1K | — |
Reference works 10
- 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)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Lange come from?
- German surname from lang(e) ‘long’; apocope/shortening shows vowel reduction in forms like Lang, Langhe, Langen, Langer. No bearer count printed. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus.
- In which country does Lange have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 93 thousand people named Lange in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lange.
- Where is Lange most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Lange is densest in Greenland — about 1 in 153 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Lange mean?
- Recorded meaning: German surname from lang(e) ‘long’; apocope/shortening shows vowel reduction in forms like Lang, Langhe, Langen, Langer.
- What are other forms of the name Lange?
- In the etymology graph, Lang is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Lange?
- In the United States, the national register counted 30,984 people named Lange in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Lange compared with other names?
- In Germany, Lange is the 24th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lange?
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/langeThe 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, “Lange” — the 24th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.