Schenke

surname · Latin script

Meaning: server of wine, MHG schenke (OHG scenko, from scenken Schiller i (The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 10 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024

/ˈʃɛŋkə/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

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

  • DEGermany≈1 in 26K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 201K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 420K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈3,200 people, est.

Record sources
106 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 26K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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How to pronounce Schenke

  • German:/ˈʃɛŋkə/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

server of wine, MHG schenke (OHG scenko, from scenken Schiller i. German: nickname for a person with a squint, from an agent deriv. of MHG schilhen to squint (from 550 Schmadicke Schilling schelh squinting, OHG scelah). z. Jewish (S Ashkenazic): see Schuler 2. Vars. (of i): Schilcher. (Of 2): Shil(l)er.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Schenke is found

(measured from records)

Schenke 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 Schenke is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany≈3,200 est.≈1 in 26K—Schenke100
US United States2581 in 1.3M268Schenke106
NL Netherlands861 in 201K86Schenke16
CA Canada≈75 est.≈1 in 552K—Schenke13
BR Brazil691 in 3.1M69——
CH Switzerland201 in 420K20Schenke11
AT Austria≈10 est.≈1 in 919K—Schenke5

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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Schenke is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Chile, Brazil, United States, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Schénké

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States

    Also written Schenké

28 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)

Schenke 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 Dutch, singular present subjunctive of schenken

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In hrx, to gift

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

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)
1940196019802000Wolf-Rüdiger Schenke, b. 1941Siegfried Schenke, b. 1943Tobias Schenke, b. 1981

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 Schenke, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence

(measured from records)

18 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 10 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Schenke come from?
server of wine, MHG schenke (OHG scenko, from scenken Schiller i. German: nickname for a person with a squint, from an agent deriv. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
What are other forms of the name Schenke?
In the etymology graph, Schänke is a form of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Schenke?
In German /ˈʃɛŋkə/ (Wiktionary).
What does the name Schenke mean?
Recorded meaning: server of wine, MHG schenke (OHG scenko, from scenken Schiller i.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Schenke?
Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 thousand people named Schenke in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schenke. After it come United States, Netherlands, Canada and Brazil; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Schenke?
In the United States, the national register counted 258 people named Schenke in 2010, about 1 in 1.3 million residents.

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

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, “Schenke”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Schenke parses inside a full name →