Wahlen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname; from mhd
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈwɑɫən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wahlen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 66K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 493K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 22K
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
- 175 (measured from records)
- 1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Toponymic surname; from mhd. walch, walhe, mnd. wale ‘Romane’. Count 508.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wahlen 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 66K | listed | Wahlen | 76 |
| US United States | 675 | 1 in 493K | 705 | Wahlen | 175 |
| CH Switzerland | 377 | 1 in 22K | 377 | Wahlen | 23 |
| CU Cuba | ≈210 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Wahlen | 2 |
| IT Italy | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 407K | — | Wahlen | 2 |
| NL Netherlands | 142 | 1 in 122K | 142 | Wahlen | 15 |
| NO Norway | 74 | 1 in 74K | 74 | Wahlen | 8 |
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; the dfa-band-4 register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Wahlen 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, Toponymic surname from a place/settlement name; bearer count 508. Historical form in weak genitive use.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In German, plural of Wahl
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)
- Heinrich Rudolph Wahlenb. 1873DEGerman Colonial Entrepreneur
- Friedrich Traugott Wahlenb. 1899CHmember of the Swiss Federal Council (1899-1985)
- Hermann Wahlenb. 1901CHSwiss author (1901-1990)
- Viola Wahlenb. 1917DEGerman actress and voice actress (1917–2018)
- George Edward Wahlenb. 1924USUnited States Navy Medal of Honor recipient
- Heinrich Wahlenb. 1930DEGerman politician
- Alfred Wahlenb. 1958DEGerman association football player
- Helmut Wahlenb. 1964DEGerman association football player
- Catrin Wahlenb. 1972DEGerman politician (born 1972)
- Adrian Wahlenb. 1997DEGerman actor
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 20 sources across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 705 | #34,583 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 681 | #31,986 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 675 | #33,731 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 377 | #3,486 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 142 | #14,165 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 74 | #19,668 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 4 | — | — | — |
| 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
- Where does the name Wahlen come from?
- Toponymic surname; from mhd. walch, walhe, mnd. wale ‘Romane’. Count 508. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Wahlen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɑɫən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Wahlen mean?
- Recorded meaning: Toponymic surname; from mhd.
- In which country does Wahlen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Wahlen in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wahlen.
- Where is Wahlen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wahlen is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 22 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wahlen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 675 people named Wahlen in 2010, about 1 in 493 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wahlen?
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/wahlenThe 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, “Wahlen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.