Soter
surname · Latin script
Meaning: An honorific epithet for rulers, heroes, and gods
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈsoʊtɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Soter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 602K(measured from records)
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 261K
- PLPoland1 in 262K
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 Soter 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 146 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 261K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
New Zealand, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Soeter in NL Netherlands.
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)
An honorific epithet for rulers, heroes, and gods.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Soter 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 | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 581K | — | Soter | 1 |
| US United States | 553 | 1 in 602K | 556 | Soter | 146 |
| BR Brazil | ≈240 est. | ≈1 in 898K | 126 | — | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈190 est. | ≈1 in 349K | — | Soter | 15 |
| FR France | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 405K | 30 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | 148as Soeter | 1 in 117K | 148 | Soeter | 13 |
| PL Poland | 146 | 1 in 262K | 74 | — | — |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈19 est. | ≈1 in 261K | — | Soter | 2 |
| SG Singapore | ≈16 est. | ≈1 in 396K | — | Soter | 2 |
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); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Soter 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.
In English, pope
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Ioan Soterb. 1927RORomanian high jumper
- Steven Soterb. 1943USAmerican physicist
- Philippe Soterb. 1948FRFrench politician
- Paul Soterb. 1969USAmerican comedian
- Michael Soterb. 1973USpolitician in Massachusetts, US
- Nicholas A SoterUSresearcher
- Jakob Soterprinter, active around 1552/1555–1561/1577
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 18 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 556 | #37,640 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 553 | #39,717 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 536 | #43,428 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 463 | #18,264 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 74 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 74 | #37,968 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 72 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 72 | #38,316 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 43 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 43 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 42 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 35 | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name 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
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 Soter mean, and where does it come from?
- An honorific epithet for rulers, heroes, and gods. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Soter?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈsoʊtɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Soter have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.4 thousand people named Soter in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled soter.
- How common is the name Soter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 553 people named Soter in 2010, about 1 in 602 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Soter?
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/soterThe 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, “Soter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.