Pfander
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Berufsname zu mhd. pfant 'Pfand'; wohl Pfandnehmer/Pfandleiher (Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
Pfander is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 26K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 56K
- CACanada≈1 in 650Kfew 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 Pfander itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 95 (measured from records)
- 1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,500 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Pfänder in DE Germany and Pfaender in BZ Belize.
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)Berufsname zu mhd. pfant 'Pfand'; wohl Pfandnehmer/Pfandleiher. Bearer count: 166.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Pfander is found
(measured from records)Pfander 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 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 56K | listed | Pfänder | 62 |
| CH Switzerland | 329 | 1 in 26K | 329 | Pfander | 17 |
| US United States | 216 | 1 in 1.5M | 218 | Pfander | 95 |
| BR Brazil | ≈65 est. | ≈1 in 3.3M | — | Pfander | 5 |
| CA Canada | ≈64 est. | ≈1 in 646K | — | Pfander | 7 |
| BB Barbados | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Pfander | 1 |
| BZ Belize | ≈3 est. | ≈1 in 151K | — | Pfaender | 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the dfa-band-5 register; 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)Pfander is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Berufs-/Amtsname zu mhd. phender, phander 'Pfandinhaber, Pfandgläubiger; obrigkeitlicher Pfänder'.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
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)- James PfanderUSAmerican law professor
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)8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 4 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pfander mean?
- Recorded meaning: Berufsname zu mhd. pfant 'Pfand'; wohl Pfandnehmer/Pfandleiher.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Pfander?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.5 thousand people named Pfander in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pfänder. After it come Switzerland, United States, Brazil and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Pfander most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pfander is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 26 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Pfander?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 329 people named Pfander in 2024, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pfander?
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/pfanderThe 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, “Pfander”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.