Sperber
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Sperber is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Somalia it is the 100th most common surname. Recorded meaning: usually from the bird name Sperber 'sparrowhawk'.
- USUnited States1 in 196K(measured from records)
- SOSomalia≈1 in 10K
- NLNetherlands1 in 94K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 261 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 10K (inferred from the name graph)
1,694 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Somalia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
usually from the bird name Sperber 'sparrowhawk'.
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sperber 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 | — | 1,694 | 1 in 196K | 1.7K | Sperber | 261 |
| SO Somalia | #100 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Sperber | 1 |
| BR Brazil | — | 571 | 1 in 371K | 571 | — | — |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 293K | 34 | Sperber | 43 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 183 | 1 in 94K | 183 | Sperber | 16 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈170 est. | ≈1 in 216K | — | Sperber | 37 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 215K | — | Sperber | 9 |
1,694 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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)
Sperber 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 German, sparrow hawk (bird of prey)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, meist Vögeln. Sperwer > lat. Nisius; Sperwering (sperwarius "Speermacher" = Speh- rer) Sper|berg, feld: s. spör
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)
- Albert Sperberb. 1836DEGerman politician and farmer (1836-1889)
- David Sperberb. 1877ROrabbi
- Manès Sperberb. 1905FRAustrian-French novelist, essayist and psychologist (1905–1984)
- Milo Sperberb. 1911GBBritish actor (1911–1992)
- Dan Sperberb. 1942FRFrench academic
- Klaus Nomib. 1944DEnot in their usual nameGerman countertenor (1944–1983)
- Jonathan Sperberb. 1952USAmerican author/professor
- Wendie Jo Sperberb. 1958USAmerican actress (1958–2005)
- Silvia Sperberb. 1965DEsport shooter
- Abigile Sperberb. 1973ILIsraeli cinematographer
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 23 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.7K | #16,848 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.6K | #16,119 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.6K | #17,459 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 571 | #15,119 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 183 | #11,354 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 34 | #64,689 |
| 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
- What does the name Sperber mean, and where does it come from?
- usually from the bird name Sperber 'sparrowhawk'. Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- In which country does Sperber have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.7 thousand people named Sperber, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sperber.
- How common is the name Sperber?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,694 people named Sperber in 2010, about 1 in 196 thousand residents.
- How common is Sperber compared with other names?
- In Somalia, Sperber is the 100th most common surname of 1,614 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sperber?
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/sperberThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Sperber” — the 100th most common surname in Somalia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.