Welter
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A general confusion or muddle, especially of a large number of items
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/wɛltɛɾ/(machine-generated) Portuguese · model-generated
Welter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. In Barbados it is the 56th most common surname.
- BBBarbados≈1 in 4.5Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 13K
- AGAntigua & Barbuda≈1 in 13Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 310 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 829 (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,200 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Luxembourg, 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)Westmitteldeutsch concentrated surname; th-spelling Welther occurs mostly outside this area. Bearer count 2324+314.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Welter is read
(measured from records)Welter is one spelling over 4 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.
- English57%
A general confusion or muddle, especially of a large number of items.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese14%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Welter in Portuguese.
- German13%
Westmitteldeutsch concentrated surname; th-spelling Welther occurs mostly outside this area. Bearer count 2324+314.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
zu ahd. waltan 'herrschen'; Rufname Walter
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Von Walter abgeleitete bzw. verkürzte Form; Hauptvokalismus/Monophthongvarianz a/o, mit e-Variante. 2950 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Umlaut-/Hebungsvariante der Vollform Walter; gezeigt als hypokoristische Umlautform im Westen Deutschlands.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Plate on vowel variation in Welter/Wälter.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
- French6.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Welter in French.
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 the surname Welter is found
(measured from records)Welter 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 | — | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | Welter | 131 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 36K | 310 | — | 4 |
| US United States | — | 4,729 | 1 in 70K | 4.7K | Welter | 310 |
| FR France | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 59K | 150 | — | 4 |
| LU Luxembourg | #147 | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 829 | 1.8K | Welter | 24 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 258 | 1 in 33K | 258 | Welter | 20 |
| BB Barbados | #56 | ≈63 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Welter | 3 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #372 | ≈7 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Welter | 1 |
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; the dfa-band-1 register; Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Michel Welterb. 1859LULuxembourgian politician and journalist (1859–1924)
- Kurt Welterb. 1916DEGerman World War II fighter pilot
- Linda Christianb. 1923MXnot in their usual nameMexican actress (1923–2011)
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)36 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Welter come from?
- Westmitteldeutsch concentrated surname; th-spelling Welther occurs mostly outside this area. Bearer count 2324+314. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus.
- How do you pronounce Welter?
- In Portuguese /wɛltɛɾ/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Welter mean?
- In English, A general confusion or muddle, especially of a large number of items.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Welter?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.2 thousand people named Welter in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled welter. After it come Brazil, United States, France and Luxembourg; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Welter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,729 people named Welter in 2010, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.
- How common is Welter compared with other names?
- In Barbados, Welter is the 56th most common surname of 11,500 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Welter?
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/welterThe 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, “Welter” — the 56th most common surname in Barbados. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.