Mester
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Obsolete form of mister (“employment, trade”)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈmɛʃtɛr/(recorded in a dictionary) Hungarian · from Wiktionary
Mester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 34K(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 53Kfew records
- HRCroatia1 in 69K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). 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)
- Record sources
- 210 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,400 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Méster in MA Morocco.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Variant of Meister from mhd. meister < lat. magister; shows the e-form in the e/ei vowel contrast. Bearer count 1247.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Mester is read
(measured from records)Mester is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English56%
Obsolete form of mister (“employment, trade”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German17%
Variant of Meister from mhd. meister < lat. magister; shows the e-form in the e/ei vowel contrast. Bearer count 1247.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
- Hungarian7.0%
master, craftsman (a tradesman who is qualified to teach apprentices)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Mester 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 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 34K | listed | Mester | 96 |
| US United States | 971 | 1 in 343K | 1.2K | Mester | 210 |
| RO Romania | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Mester | 14 |
| MA Morocco | ≈500 est. | ≈1 in 71K | — | Méster | 6 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 338K | — | Mester | 28 |
| IE Ireland | ≈98 est. | ≈1 in 53K | — | Mester | 2 |
| HR Croatia | 61 | 1 in 69K | 61 | — | — |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the dfa-band-1 register; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)Mester 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.
occupational name for a teacher, or master craftsman, from the vocabulary word mester ‘master’, ‘craftsman’, or alternatively a status name for a learned person. Compare Meister.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
North German form of Meister or Dutch variant of Meester.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Indonesian, bachelor of laws
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)- Hermann Mesterb. 1888DEGerman politician (1888-1973)
- Endre Mesterb. 1903HUHungarian surgeon
- Miklós Mesterb. 1906HUHungarian historian, politician (1906–1989)
- Jorge Mesterb. 1935MXAmerican conductor
- László Mesterb. 1946HUHungarian politician (1946–2025)
- Loretta Mesterb. 1958USAmerican businesswoman
- Gyula Mesterb. 1974chess player
- Mathias Mesterb. 1986DEParalympic athlete of Germany
- Tamás Mesterb. 1988HUHungarian association footballer
- Csaba Mesterb. 2002HUHungarian association football player
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)28 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.2K | #22,396 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.1K | #21,424 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 971 | #25,459 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Mester come from?
- Variant of Meister from mhd. meister < lat. magister; shows the e-form in the e/ei vowel contrast. Bearer count 1247. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus.
- How do you pronounce Mester?
- In Hungarian /ˈmɛʃtɛr/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Mester mean?
- In English, Obsolete form of mister (“employment, trade”).
- In which country does Mester have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.4 thousand people named Mester in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mester.
- How common is the name Mester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 971 people named Mester in 2010, about 1 in 343 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Mester?
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/mesterThe 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, “Mester”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.