Niess
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnis/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Niess is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Recorded meaning: variant of Nies 1.
- DEGermany≈1 in 100K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 834K
- DKDenmark1 in 89K
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
- 145 (measured from records)
- 1 in 89K (inferred from the name graph)
≈800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
variant of Nies 1.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Niess 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 | ≈800 est. | ≈1 in 100K | — | Niess | 85 |
| FR France | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 120K | 98 | — | 2 |
| US United States | 399 | 1 in 834K | 416 | Niess | 145 |
| BR Brazil | 68 | 1 in 3.1M | 68 | — | 2 |
| DK Denmark | 66 | 1 in 89K | 66 | — | — |
| AT Austria | ≈49 est. | ≈1 in 181K | — | Niess | 17 |
| CH Switzerland | 26 | 1 in 323K | 26 | Niess | 14 |
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; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)
Niess 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 Luxembourgish, niece
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Truls, neass
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Robert Niessb. 1958DEGerman and American architect, active in Berlin (born 1958)
- Valentin Niessb. 1978FRresearcher
- Dierk NiessingDEnot in their usual nameresearcher
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)
Attested in 18 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 416 | #53,634 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 399 | #52,037 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 394 | #49,965 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 107 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 100 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 99 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 98 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 84 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 77 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 72 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 68 | #84,221 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 66 | #8,151 |
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)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Niess mean, and where does it come from?
- variant of Nies 1. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Niess?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnis/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Niess have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 799 people named Niess in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled niess.
- Where is Niess most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Niess is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 89 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Niess?
- In the United States, the national register counted 399 people named Niess in 2010, about 1 in 834 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Niess?
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/niessThe 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, “Niess”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.