Sturz
surname · Latin script
Meaning: probably from topographic 'steep place'; perhaps older personal name
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/stɝz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sturz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 150K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.6M
- RORomania≈1 in 40K
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)
- Sources
- 106 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 40K (inferred from the name graph)
≈530 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Romania, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
probably from topographic 'steep place'; perhaps older personal name.
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sturz 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.
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 2020. 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)
Sturz is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, fall
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
In German, Wohl Flurn. ("stei- le Stelle"), doch viell. schon altd. PN. Sturzen | - berger, hofecker, Stürzen- acker, Stürzl, |mayer, in- ger (x mhd. Stünzel "Pflanzenstrunk")
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Romanian, thrush (any of several species of songbirds of the family Turdidae)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, STURZ, sturzi, s. m. Nume dat mai multor specii de păsări de pădure de talie mică, cu cioc conic și puternic, cu pene brune pe spate și albe-gălbui (cu pete brune) pe piept, care se hrănesc cu insecte, viermi, fructe etc. (Turdus).
as a wordDEX online (dexonline.ro) - DEX '96 / DEX '98 definitions with etymology
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)
- Helfrich Peter Sturzb. 1736DEGerman author (1736-1779)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Sturzb. 1762DEGerman teacher and classical philologist
- Rudi Sturzb. 1952DEGerman association football player
- Lisa Sturzb. 1955USpuppeteer (fl. since the 1980s)
- Jiri Bartolomej Sturzb. 1977CZCzech singer
- Ionuț-Viorel SturzRORomanian politician from Bratca, Bihor County
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 14 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 232 | #86,457 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 212 | #82,691 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 210 | #88,336 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Sturz mean, and where does it come from?
- probably from topographic 'steep place'; perhaps older personal name. Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Sturz?
- A machine transcription gives /stɝz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Sturz have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 534 people named Sturz in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sturz.
- How common is the name Sturz?
- In the United States, the national register counted 210 people named Sturz in 2010, about 1 in 1.6 million residents.
What do you want to know about Sturz?
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/sturzThe 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, “Sturz”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.