Reich
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From a shortened form of a Germanic compound personal name containing rihhi ‘power, might’; or from a medieval German and Jewish nickname for a rich or powerful man
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɹaɪk/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Reich is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 4.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 22K
- USUnited States1 in 26K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 400 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈36,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From a shortened form of a Germanic compound personal name containing rihhi ‘power, might’; or from a medieval German and Jewish nickname for a rich or powerful man.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Reich is read(measured from records)
Reich is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English66%
From a shortened form of a Germanic compound personal name containing rihhi ‘power, might’; or from a medieval German and Jewish nickname for a rich or powerful man.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German18%
from Germ. *rīk- 'powerful, ruler'; often via Rufname Richari
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from ahd. rihhi 'mighty, powerful', later 'wealthy'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
empire, kingdom
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
rich, abundant
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Reich 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 39K | — | Reich | 6 |
| DE Germany | #261 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | listed | Reich | 180 |
| US United States | — | 12,891 | 1 in 26K | 13K | Reich | 400 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 37K | 327 | Reich | 75 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Reich | 113 |
| AT Austria | #499 | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | — | Reich | 79 |
| CH Switzerland | #862 | 1,086 | 1 in 7.7K | 1.1K | Reich | 49 |
| IL Israel | — | ≈520 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Reich | 37 |
| IS Iceland | — | ≈44 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Reich | 4 |
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; the dfa-band-6 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral 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)
Reich 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.
Given name, as rich, in the district of Under Rhine, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
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)
- Ferdinand Reichb. 1799DEGerman chemist (1799–1882)
- Lilly Reichb. 1885DEGerman designer (1885–1947)
- Zinaida Nikolaevna Rajhb. 1894UAnot in their usual nameRussian actress (1894–1939)
- Wilhelm Reichb. 1897USAustrian-American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, sex educator and sociologist (1897–1957)
- Marcel Reich-Ranickib. 1920DEPolish-born German literary critic (1920–2013)
- Charles A. Reichb. 1928USAmerican lawyer (1928–2019)
- Steve Reichb. 1936USAmerican composer (born 1936)
- Robert Reichb. 1946USAmerican political economist (1946–)
- Christopher Reichb. 1961USAmerican writer
- David E. Reichb. 1974USAmerican professor of genetics
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 40 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 13K | #2,796 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 12K | #2,828 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,696 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 1.1K | #1,082 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 327 | #15,405 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 6 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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 Reich mean, and where does it come from?
- From a shortened form of a Germanic compound personal name containing rihhi ‘power, might’; or from a medieval German and Jewish nickname for a rich or powerful man. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Reich?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹaɪk/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Reich?
- In the etymology graph, Rich and Rijk are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Reich have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Reich in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled reich.
- How common is the name Reich?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,891 people named Reich in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
- How common is Reich compared with other names?
- In Germany, Reich is the 261st most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Reich?
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/reichThe 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, “Reich” — the 261st most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.