Sommer
surname · Latin script
Meaning: As summer, only in the north of Baden 1809, in the area of Sommerfreund Bretten, in Jöhlingen, in the Palatinate, in the Middle Rhine district and in Murg-Pfinzkreis
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 30 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈzɔmɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Sommer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Germany it is the 38th most common surname.
- DKDenmark1 in 1.3K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.5K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.6K
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 Sommer 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)
- #948 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 509 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
56,953 named Summers, 2010
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Summers in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada.
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)As summer, only in the north of Baden 1809, in the area of Sommerfreund Bretten, in Jöhlingen, in the Palatinate, in the Middle Rhine district and in Murg-Pfinzkreis.
Cited for this meaning 1
- The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Sommer 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 | #324 | 56,953as Summers | 1 in 5.8K | 70K | Summers | 509 |
| DE Germany | #38 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | listed | Sommer | 231 |
| GB United Kingdom | #337 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | 15K | Summers | 256 |
| CA Canada | #315 | ≈6,800 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | 32 | Summers | 181 |
| BR Brazil | — | 6,482as Zimmer | 1 in 33K | 6.5K | — | 28 |
| AT Austria | #89 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 79 | Sommer | 95 |
| CH Switzerland | #87 | 5,104 | 1 in 1.6K | 5.1K | Sommer | 109 |
| DK Denmark | #109 | 4,351 | 1 in 1.3K | 4.4K | Sommer | 128 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 829 | 899 | — | 20 |
56,953 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; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; the deutsche-namenkunde-gottschald-1982 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es). 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)Sommer is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, German surname from the season name 'summer'; likely a personal-characteristic nickname (summer-born or warm/cheerful). Bearer count: 1533; also many local attestations.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Nickname from the season 'summer'; also sometimes for a cheerful person, a summer-play role, or from occupations done mainly in summer.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, nickname or ornamental surname from Sommer 'summer'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Personal characteristic (biographical): summer; byname referring to the season or a summer-born person. Bearer count: 19667.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, from the seasonal name Sommer or from sunny-side place names
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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)- Theo Sommerb. 1930DEGerman journalist (1930–2022)
- Josef Sommerb. 1934USAmerican actor (b. 1934)
- Elke Sommerb. 1940DEGerman actress (born 1940)
- Donna Summerb. 1948USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer (1948–2012)
- Bert Sommerb. 1949USAmerican folk singer, songwriter and actor (1949-1990)
- Michael Sommerb. 1952DEGerman trade unionist
- Helin Evrim Sommerb. 1971DEGerman politician
- Kostas Sommerb. 1975DEGreek actor
- Rich Sommerb. 1978USAmerican actor
- Yann Sommerb. 1988CHSwiss association football player
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)59 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 12K | #3,080 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 12K | #2,826 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,151 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5.1K | #107 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4.4K | #81 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.5K | #4,023 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 281 | #17,113 |
| DE Germany | Deutsche Namenkunde (Gottschald, 1982) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 9
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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 Sommer mean, and where does it come from?
- As summer, only in the north of Baden 1809, in the area of Sommerfreund Bretten, in Jöhlingen, in the Palatinate, in the Middle Rhine district and in Murg-Pfinzkreis. Recorded by The Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History.
- What are other forms of the name Sommer?
- In the etymology graph, Zomer is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sommer?
- In German /ˈzɔmɐ/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Sommer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 57 thousand people named Summers, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Sommer most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sommer is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 1.3 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Sommer?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 5,104 people named Sommer in 2024, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Sommer compared with other names?
- In the United States, Sommer is the 324th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sommer?
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/sommerThe 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, “Sommer” — the 324th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.