Reiss
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Exists in the town of Bretten, district of Middle Rhine
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɹajs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Reiss is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 45K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 13Kas Reiß
- NONorway1 in 36K
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 Reiss 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 212 (measured from records)
- 1 in 36K (inferred from the name graph)
7,334 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Reiß in DE Germany.
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)
Exists in the town of Bretten, district of Middle Rhine. After the subdivision the Jewish community in 1827, it was annexed to Murg and Pfinzkreis.
Sources 1
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Reiss 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 7,334 | 1 in 45K | 7.3K | Reiss | 212 |
| DE Germany | #556 | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Reiß | 142 |
| PL Poland | — | 365 | 1 in 105K | 189 | Reiss | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 249 | 1 in 850K | 249 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 167 | 1 in 50K | 167 | Reiss | 23 |
| NO Norway | — | 152 | 1 in 36K | 152 | Reiss | 13 |
| AT Austria | #974 | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 64K | — | Reiss | 53 |
7,334 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Reiss 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.
In German, Switzerland and Liechtenstein standard spelling of reiß
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, brauciens (ar transportlīdzekli) no maršruta viena galapunkta līdz otram
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Monēta Portugālē līdz 1911. g. un Brazīlijā līdz 1942. g.
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)
- Archibald Reissb. 1875DEforensic scientist (1875-1929)
- Ignace Reissb. 1899PLSoviet spy (1899–1937)
- Eda Reiss Merinb. 1913USAmerican actress (1913–1998)
- Ernst Reissb. 1920CHSwiss mountaineer (1920-2010)
- Louise Reissb. 1920USAmerican physician (1920–2011)
- Stuart A. Reissb. 1921USset decorator (1921–2014)
- Mitchell Reissb. 1957USAmerican diplomat
- Mike Reissb. 1959USAmerican screenwriter
- Tom Reissb. 1964USAmerican author, historian, and journalist (b. 1964)
- William Reissb. 1976USAmerican television writer and storyboard artist
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 37 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.3K | #4,815 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.1K | #4,590 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.7K | #5,041 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 249 | #30,713 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 189 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 189 | #17,091 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 176 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 176 | #18,520 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 167 | #7,266 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 152 | #10,312 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
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 Reiss come from?
- Exists in the town of Bretten, district of Middle Rhine. After the subdivision the Jewish community in 1827, it was annexed to Murg and Pfinzkreis. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
- How do you pronounce Reiss?
- A machine transcription gives /ɹajs/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Reiss mean?
- Recorded meaning: Exists in the town of Bretten, district of Middle Rhine.
- In which country does Reiss have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 7.3 thousand people named Reiss, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled reiss.
- Where is Reiss most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Reiss is densest in Norway — about 1 in 36 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Reiss?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,334 people named Reiss in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Reiss compared with other names?
- In Germany, Reiss is the 556th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Reiss?
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/reissThe 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, “Reiss” — the 556th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.