Prüfer

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Occupational surname from Prüfer 'examiner, inspector'

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 4 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024

Pronunciation:Explore pronunciation →

Prüfer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

  • DEGermany≈1 in 35K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NONorway1 in 391K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 700K

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 Prüfer 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)

≈2,400 people, est.

Record sources
73 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 35K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Prufer in US United States.

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)

Occupational surname from Prüfer 'examiner, inspector'. Bearer count: 1293.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Prüfer is found

(measured from records)

Prüfer 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.

Where Prüfer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany≈2,400 est.≈1 in 35K—Prüfer66
US United States≈110 est.≈1 in 3.1MlistedPrufer73
FR France≈45 est.≈1 in 1.5M9—1
AT Austria≈37 est.≈1 in 246K—Prüfer8
BR Brazil351 in 6M35—1
BE Belgium151 in 781K15—2
NO Norway141 in 391K14Prüfer5
CH Switzerland121 in 700K12—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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Prüfer is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium

    Also written Prufer, Prûfer

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Prufer

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Chile, United States, Argentina

    Also written Prufer, Prufër

  • Danish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark

    Also written Prufer

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Prufer

12 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Prüfer 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, Berufsname: Prüfer, amtlicher Kontrolleur/Schätzer von Preisen, Qualität oder Abgaben.

    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)
1850190019502000Kurt Prüfer, b. 1891Heinz Prüfer, b. 1896Tillmann Prüfer, b. 1974

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)
FormalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Dear Prüfer, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

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

Where does the name Prüfer come from?
Occupational surname from Prüfer 'examiner, inspector'. Bearer count: 1293. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
What does the name Prüfer mean?
Recorded meaning: Occupational surname from Prüfer 'examiner, inspector'.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Prüfer?
Mondonomo estimates about 2.4 thousand people named Prüfer in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled prüfer. After it come United States, France, Austria and Brazil; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Prüfer?
In Brazil, the national register counted 35 people named Prüfer, about 1 in 6.0 million residents.

What do you want to know about Prüfer?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pr%C3%BCfer

The 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, “Prüfer”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Prüfer parses inside a full name →