Starke

loc · Latin script

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

Starke is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: German surname from stark ‘strong, sturdy’; vowel shortening/apocope appears in forms like Starck, Stark, Starke, Stargk, Storck.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 3.6Kas Stark(inferred from the name graph)
  • ATAustria≈1 in 4.4Kas Stark
  • CACanada≈1 in 6.9Kas Stark

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 Starke 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)

41,735 named Stark, 2010

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
496 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 39K (inferred from the name graph)

Netherlands

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

StarkLatin(measured from records)
สตาร์คThai(measured from records)
스타크Hangul(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Stark in US United States, DE Germany, GB United Kingdom and 6 more.

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)

German surname from stark ‘strong, sturdy’; vowel shortening/apocope appears in forms like Starck, Stark, Starke, Stargk, Storck. No bearer count printed.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Starke 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 Starke is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#65141,735as Stark1 in 8K42KStark496
DE Germany#139≈22,000 est.≈1 in 3.6KlistedStark204
GB United Kingdom#850≈7,500 est.≈1 in 8.7K3.9KStark212
CA Canada#595≈5,500 est.≈1 in 6.9K1Stark184
EG Egypt—≈4,100 est.≈1 in 25K—Stark21
SE Sweden—3,173as Stark1 in 3.2K3.2KStark64
AT Austria#256≈2,000 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Stark84
CH Switzerland#9231,237as Stark1 in 6.8K1.2KStark50
FI Finland—953as Stark1 in 5.8K953—22
NL Netherlands—4471 in 39K447Stark42

41,735 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 — Surname Frequency 2000; the dfa-band-1 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Starke is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, France, Belgium, United Kingdom

    Languages: German, French, Dutch

    Also written Stärke, Staerke

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France

    Also written Starké, Stärke

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Stärke

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Старке, Stärke

40 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Starke 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, Zu mnd. sterke(de) 'Stärke, Kraft' bzw. mnd. starke, sterke 'junge Kuh'; die Karte zeigt Umlaut- und Apokope-Varianten. Bearer count: 4071.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Übername zu mhd. starc, mnd. stark, sterk 'stark, gewaltig, kräftig, schlimm, böse'; Typ mit -e-Variante und ck-Formen; 4071 Träger.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Übername zu mhd. starc, mnd. stark/sterk 'stark u.ä.'; Apokope von -e.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Übername zu mhd. stark ‚stark, kräftig‘; apokopierte Kurzformen zeigen den Wegfall des Endvokals. Belegt in vielen Schreibungen seit 1231/1282.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In Swedish, definite natural masculine singular of stark

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

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)

190019502000Pauline Starke, b. 1901Heinz Starke, b. 1911Ute Starke, b. 1939Anthony Starke, b. 1963Andrasch Starke, b. 1974Tom Starke, b. 1981Benjamin Starke, b. 1986Annie Starke, b. 1988Manfred Starke, b. 1991Sandra Starke, b. 1993

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 29 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Starke
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.3K#9,813
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.2K#9,436
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203K#10,235
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007447#4,405
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002238#19,054
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—105#6,963
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202479#13,215
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—22#41,691
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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

Where does the name Starke come from?
German surname from stark ‘strong, sturdy’; vowel shortening/apocope appears in forms like Starck, Stark, Starke, Stargk, Storck. No bearer count printed. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus.
What does the name Starke mean?
Recorded meaning: German surname from stark ‘strong, sturdy’; vowel shortening/apocope appears in forms like Starck, Stark, Starke, Stargk, Storck.
In which country does Starke have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 42 thousand people named Stark, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Starke most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Starke is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 39 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Starke?
In the Netherlands, the national register counted 447 people named Starke in 2007, about 1 in 39 thousand residents.
How common is Starke compared with other names?
In the United States, Starke is the 651st most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Starke?

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 https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/starke

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 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, “Starke” — the 651st most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Starke parses inside a full name →