Schlegel
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: either ‘blacksmith’ or ‘mason’; also from a medieval nickname for a vigorous person
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈʃɫeɪɡəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Schlegel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- CHSwitzerland1 in 3K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 4.6K
- USUnited States1 in 45K
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
- 317 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈19,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
either ‘blacksmith’ or ‘mason’; also from a medieval nickname for a vigorous person.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Schlegel is read(measured from records)
Schlegel is one spelling over 3 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.
- English54%
either ‘blacksmith’ or ‘mason’; also from a medieval nickname for a vigorous person.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German28%
from ‘hammer, mallet’; also byname for a jailer or smithy
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
occupational name for a cooper; from mallet/hammer
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
smith, or nickname for a forceful person, from MHG slegel sledgehammer (OHG slegil, a deriv. of slahan to strike). Vars. : Schlegl, Schlogl.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
leg of animal (eaten as meat)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Deutscher Berufs- und Wohnstättenname zu mhd. slegel 'Schlägel, schwerer Hammer'; für den Steinmetz, auch für Gefangenenwärter/Stockmeister bzw. nach Schmiede oder Schlachthaus.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
- Spanish6.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Schlegel in Spanish.
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)
Schlegel 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 | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 72K | — | Schlegel | 5 |
| DE Germany | #299 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.6K | listed | Schlegel | 181 |
| US United States | — | 7,461 | 1 in 45K | 7.5K | Schlegel | 317 |
| CH Switzerland | #241 | 2,809 | 1 in 3K | 2.8K | Schlegel | 72 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 57K | 55 | Schlegel | 56 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈370 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Schlegel | 32 |
| BZ Belize | #143 | ≈41 est. | ≈1 in 9.8K | — | Schlegel | 1 |
| LI Liechtenstein | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 8K | 59 | — | 8 |
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 deutsche-namenkunde-gottschald-1982 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Liechtenstein — Familiennamenstatistik (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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Johann Elias Schlegelb. 1719DEGerman poet (1719–1749)
- Johann Adolf Schlegelb. 1721DEGerman poet
- Johann Heinrich Schlegelb. 1726DEGerman historian and librarian
- Dorothea Veitb. 1764DEnot in their usual nameGerman novelist and translator
- August Wilhelm Schlegelb. 1767DEGerman poet, translator, critic, and writer (1767–1845)
- Friedrich Schlegelb. 1772DEGerman poet, critic and scholar, editor
- Hermann Schlegelb. 1804DEGerman ornithologist and herpetologist (1804-1884)
- Helmut Schlegelb. 1943DEGerman Franciscan friar, priest, meditation teacher, book author and lyricist of New Spiritual Songs (born 1943)
- Hans Schlegelb. 1951DEGerman astronaut
- Bernd Schlegelb. 1972DEGerman film editor
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.5K | #4,747 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.2K | #4,519 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.7K | #5,047 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.8K | #288 |
| LI Liechtenstein | Statistik Liechtenstein — Familiennamenstatistik (surnames) | 2020 | 59 | — |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 55 | #47,935 |
| DE Germany | Deutsche Namenkunde (Gottschald, 1982) | — | — | — |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 5 | — | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | A Dictionary of Surnames (Hanks & Hodges, 1988) | — | — | — |
| 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
- 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 Schlegel mean, and where does it come from?
- either ‘blacksmith’ or ‘mason’; also from a medieval nickname for a vigorous person. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Schlegel?
- In the etymology graph, Schlägel is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Schlegel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈʃɫeɪɡəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Schlegel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Schlegel in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled schlegel.
- Where is Schlegel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Schlegel is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 3.0 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Schlegel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,461 people named Schlegel in 2010, about 1 in 45 thousand residents.
- How common is Schlegel compared with other names?
- In Belize, Schlegel is the 143rd most common surname of 11,408 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Schlegel?
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/schlegelThe 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, “Schlegel” — the 143rd most common surname in Belize. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.