Merz
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German surname from 'März' (March); likely a personal-characteristic nickname for someone born in March (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/mɛʁt͡s/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Merz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 4,321 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.8K(measured from records)
- USUnited States1 in 77K
- FIFinland1 in 136K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 238 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.8K (inferred from the name graph)
4,321 people, 2010
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
How to pronounce Merz
- German:/mɛʁt͡s/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)German surname from 'März' (March); likely a personal-characteristic nickname for someone born in March. Bearer count: 1336; also many local attestations.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Where the surname Merz is found
(measured from records)Merz 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 4,321 | 1 in 77K | 4.3K | Merz | 238 |
| CH Switzerland | #264 | 2,997 | 1 in 2.8K | 3K | Merz | 78 |
| AR Argentina | — | 83 | 1 in 548K | 83 | — | — |
| PL Poland | — | 65 | 1 in 589K | 34 | Merz | 2 |
| ES Spain | — | 44 | 1 in 1.1M | 44 | Merz | 17 |
| FI Finland | — | 41 | 1 in 136K | 41 | — | 3 |
| BE Belgium | — | 41 | 1 in 286K | 41 | — | 7 |
| NO Norway | — | 20 | 1 in 273K | 20 | — | 9 |
4,321 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)Merz 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, Übername zu mhd. merz(e) 'Kostbarkeit, Kleinod, Schatz'; evtl. auch Berufsname zu mhd. merzeman 'Kleinhändler'. Beleg: 6848.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Übername zu mhd. merz(e) 'Kostbarkeit, Kleinod', also zu einer wertvollen/angesehenen Eigenschaft.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Zu März; Übername nach dem Monat März.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, from Mar-/Mark-; also from März
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In hrx, March
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)- Hans-Rudolf Merzb. 1942CHmember of the Swiss Federal Council
- Friedrich Merzb. 1955DEGerman politician, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Jarreth Merzb. 1970CHSwiss-Ghanaian actor and film director
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)31 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Merz come from?
- German surname from 'März' (March); likely a personal-characteristic nickname for someone born in March. Bearer count: 1336; also many local attestations. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- How do you pronounce Merz?
- In German /mɛʁt͡s/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Merz mean?
- Recorded meaning: German surname from 'März' (March); likely a personal-characteristic nickname for someone born in March.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Merz?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 4.3 thousand people named Merz, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled merz. After it come Switzerland, Argentina, Poland and Spain; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Merz most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Merz is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 2.8 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Merz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,321 people named Merz in 2010, about 1 in 77 thousand residents.
- How common is Merz compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Merz is the 264th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Merz?
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/merzThe 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, “Merz” — ranked 7204th in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.