Unger

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Toponymic surname from a place or dwelling/landscape name; distribution table for the type

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

/ˈəŋɡɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Unger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In Austria it is the 100th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ATAustria≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 3.6K
  • CACanada≈1 in 14K

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)

≈22,000 people, est.

Sources
428 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)

Austria, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Toponymic surname from a place or dwelling/landscape name; distribution table for the type. Bearer count not printed.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

Where in the world(measured from records)

Unger 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 Unger is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#205≈22,000 est.≈1 in 3.6K—Unger194
US United States—14,7381 in 23K15KUnger428
AT Austria#100≈3,800 est.≈1 in 2.3K—Unger113
CA Canada—≈2,600 est.≈1 in 14K—Unger161
EG Egypt—≈2,400 est.≈1 in 43K—Unger8
SE Sweden#9717711 in 13K771Unger44
SI Slovenia—1311 in 16K131—4

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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)

Unger is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Ünger, Únger

  • Croatian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Slovenia, Canada

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Унгер, Ünger

  • English surname28 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Israel, Germany, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, Hebrew, German

    Also written Ungar, אונגר, אונגאר, Ungár, Úngar

49 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)

Unger is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, Toponymic surname: from a place/region name; bearer count 9625.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

  • In German, Toponymic/ethnonymic surname from Ungarn/Hungarn 'Hungary'; 'Ungar, aus Ungarn'. Bearer count: 9625 tokens (Unger(s) 9112+32, Ungar 431, von Ungern-Sternberg 28, Ungering 12, von Unger 10).

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte

  • In Danish, indefinite plural of unge

    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)

1700180019002000Georg Christian Unger, b. 1743Franz Unger, b. 1800Caroline Unger, b. 1803Peter Unger, b. 1942Roberto Mangabeira Unger, b. 1947Joe Unger, b. 1949Brian Unger, b. 1965Deborah Kara Unger, b. 1966Tobias Unger, b. 1979Billy Unger, b. 1995

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)

FormalDear Unger,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 41 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Unger
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201015K#2,449
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200015K#2,272
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202014K#2,472
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—771#1,286
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—131#3,443
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 8

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 Unger come from?
Toponymic surname from a place or dwelling/landscape name; distribution table for the type. Bearer count not printed. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
How do you pronounce Unger?
A machine transcription gives /ˈəŋɡɝ/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Unger mean?
Recorded meaning: Toponymic surname from a place or dwelling/landscape name; distribution table for the type.
In which country does Unger have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Unger in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled unger.
How common is the name Unger?
In the United States, the national register counted 14,738 people named Unger in 2010, about 1 in 23 thousand residents.
How common is Unger compared with other names?
In Germany, Unger is the 205th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Unger?

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

The 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, “Unger” — the 205th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Unger parses inside a full name →