Winkler
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Winkler is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In English, recorded as Person who lives on a corner or keeps a corner shop, from Middle High German winkel ‘corner’.
- USUnited States1 in 15K(measured from records)
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.9K
- PLPoland1 in 11K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 432 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈55,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
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)
Person who lives on a corner or keeps a corner shop, from Middle High German winkel ‘corner’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Winkler is read(measured from records)
Winkler is one spelling over 2 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.
- English58%
Person who lives on a corner or keeps a corner shop, from Middle High German winkel ‘corner’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German29%
a surname originating as an occupation, from the Low German for 'shopkeeper'
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Wohnstätten-/Herkunftsname zu mhd. winkel; Suffixbildung -er, teils auch Berufsname 'Händler im Winkel/Krämer'. 25898 Tokens.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Wohnstätten-/Herkunftsnamen zu Wink(e)l ‘Ecke, Winkel’; -er-Bildung; 25344 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Bildung mit -er zu Winkel: „der aus dem Winkel / vom Ort Winkel Stammende“; Herkunftsname, 25898 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
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 in the world(measured from records)
Winkler 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Winkler | 8 |
| US United States | 21,993 | 1 in 15K | 22K | Winkler | 432 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 74K | — | Winkler | 17 |
| PL Poland | 3,605 | 1 in 11K | 1.8K | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | 2,938 | 1 in 2.9K | 2.9K | Winkler | 51 |
| CZ Czechia | 764 | 1 in 14K | 766 | — | 3 |
| DK Denmark | 492 | 1 in 12K | 492 | Winkler | 65 |
| IE Ireland | ≈380 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Winkler | 13 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Winkler is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
A shop owner, who in a corner had his (Workshop).
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
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)
- Clemens Winklerb. 1838DEGerman chemist (1838-1904)
- Irwin Winklerb. 1931USAmerican film director and producer
- Heinrich August Winklerb. 1938DEGerman historian (born 1938)
- Mel Winklerb. 1941USAmerican actor (1941–2020)
- Angela Winklerb. 1944DEGerman actress
- Henry Winklerb. 1945USAmerican actor
- Charles Winklerb. 1953USAmerican television and film director and producer
- Anton Winklerb. 1954DEGerman luger (1954-2016)
- Kati Winklerb. 1974DEGerman ice dancer
- Max Winklerb. 1983USAmerican film director, screenwriter, television director
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 46 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 22K | #1,640 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 22K | #1,505 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 21K | #1,662 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 2.9K | #271 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 1.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 1.8K | #1,519 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 1.8K | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 1.8K | #1,540 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 766 | #1,410 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 766 | #1,825 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 764 | #1,877 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 492 | #873 |
Reference works 8
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Winkler mean, and where does it come from?
- Person who lives on a corner or keeps a corner shop, from Middle High German winkel ‘corner’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Winkler have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 55 thousand people named Winkler in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled winkler.
- Where is Winkler most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Winkler is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 2.9 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Winkler?
- In the United States, the national register counted 21,993 people named Winkler in 2010, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Winkler?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/winklerThe 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, “Winkler”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.