Stahl

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Stahl is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In English, recorded as ‘metal worker’ or ‘armourer’, from Middle High German stahl ‘steel, armour’.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 1.9K(measured from records)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 3.3K
  • USUnited States1 in 15K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈24,000 people, est.

Sources
433 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 1.9K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

Locally spelled Ståhl in SE Sweden, FI Finland.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

‘metal worker’ or ‘armourer’, from Middle High German stahl ‘steel, armour’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.

How Stahl is read(measured from records)

Stahl is one spelling over 2 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.

  • English70%

    ‘metal worker’ or ‘armourer’, from Middle High German stahl ‘steel, armour’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • German16%

    Occupational surname: smith/metalworker, or nickname from 'steel'; bearer count not given on this page.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

    from 'steel'; also from ahd. stai 'place, dwelling' or mnd. stai 'test site'.

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    Occupational surname for a steel/iron worker; bearers: 205 tokens.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

    Occupation; usually refers to the smith. Bearer count not given.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

    steel

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

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)

Stahl 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 Stahl is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#177≈24,000 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Stahl186
US United States—22,2111 in 15K22KStahl433
SE Sweden#1925,4351 in 1.9K5.4KStåhl63
GB United Kingdom—≈2,900 est.≈1 in 23K185Stahl82
CA Canada—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 17K—Stahl104
FI Finland—1,3411 in 4.2K1.3KStåhl12
AT Austria—≈1,000 est.≈1 in 8.8K—Stahl38
IE Ireland—≈350 est.≈1 in 15K—Stahl10

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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)

Stahl is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Sweden, Canada

    Also written Ståhl

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Stȧhl, Stàhl, Štáhl, Stähl, Stáhl

  • Finnish surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Finland, Estonia, Sweden

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Ståhl, Štahl

  • Polish surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Czechia, United States, Slovakia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Štáhl, Ståhl, Stáhl, Štahl, Stähl

  • Hindi surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Canada, Sweden, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Bangla

    Also written Ståhl

  • Swahili surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Canada

    Also written Ståhl

  • Vietnamese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Vietnam

    Languages: Vietnamese, Khmer

    Also written Ståhl

51 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

16001700180019002000Georg Ernst Stahl, b. 1659Friedrich Julius Stahl, b. 1802John M. Stahl, b. 1886Lesley Stahl, b. 1941Andrew Stahl, b. 1952Jerry Stahl, b. 1953Sebastian Stahl, b. 1978Nick Stahl, b. 1979Linda Stahl, b. 1985Marie-Luise Stahl, b. 1990

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 36 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Stahl
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201022K#1,619
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200022K#1,471
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202021K#1,669
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—296#3,006
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002185#22,443
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—76#15,930
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 7

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 Stahl mean, and where does it come from?
‘metal worker’ or ‘armourer’, from Middle High German stahl ‘steel, armour’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Stahl?
In the etymology graph, Staal is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Stahl have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 24 thousand people named Stahl in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled stahl.
Where is Stahl most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Stahl is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 1.9 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Stahl?
In the United States, the national register counted 22,211 people named Stahl in 2010, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
How common is Stahl compared with other names?
In Germany, Stahl is the 177th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Stahl?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

The 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, “Stahl” — the 177th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Stahl parses inside a full name →