Wolfgang
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymical second element -gang in the given name Wolfgang; bearer count 259
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male
- Austria (Statistik Austria, 2024): listed as male
- Venezuela (asosab): listed as female
- Poland (dane.gov.pl): listed as male
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 35 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/ˈvɔlfɡaŋ(k)/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Wolfgang is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 10th most common given name.
- DEGermany≈1 in 140(inferred from the name graph)
- ATAustria≈1 in 160
- CHSwitzerland≈1 in 1.7K
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)
- Record sources
- 309 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 142 (inferred from the name graph)
≈590,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Patronymical second element -gang in the given name Wolfgang; bearer count 259.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Wolfgang, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Wolfgang 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 | #10 | ≈590,000 est. | ≈1 in 142 | — | Wolfgang | 299 |
| AT Austria | #20 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 160 | 4.6K | Wolfgang | 208 |
| BE Belgium | #619 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | 1 | Wolfgang | 58 |
| CH Switzerland | #209 | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 25 | Wolfgang | 123 |
| US United States | — | 4,732 | 1 in 70K | 4.7K | Wolfgang | 309 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,188 | 1 in 8.6K | 1.2K | — | 51 |
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: Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)Wolfgang is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Germanico: wolf 'lupo' + gang 'passo, andatura'.
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
In Swedish, Wolfgang är ett tyskt namn, sammansatt av fornhögtyskt wolf ’varg, ulv’ och gang ’vapenlek’. En känd namnbärare var kompositören Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In German, from wolf- 'wolf' + gang 'going, walk'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, German given name 'wolf-path'.
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Germanic: ‘track of the wolf’.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)- Johann Wolfgang von Goetheb. 1749DEGerman writer, artist, natural scientist and politician (1749–1832)
- Wolfgang Amadè Mozartb. 1756ATAustrian composer of the Classical period (1756-1791)
- Wolfgang Schüsselb. 1945ATChancellor of Austria from 2000 to 2007
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)77 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 35 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Wolfgang a male or female name?
- Wolfgang is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male; Austria (Statistik Austria, 2024): listed as male; Venezuela (asosab): listed as female; Poland (dane.gov.pl): listed as male. We don't publish a percentage split.
- What does the name Wolfgang mean, and where does it come from?
- Patronymical second element -gang in the given name Wolfgang; bearer count 259. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
- How do you pronounce Wolfgang?
- In German /ˈvɔlfɡaŋ(k)/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people named Wolfgang?
- Mondonomo estimates about 588 thousand people named Wolfgang in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wolfgang. After it come Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and United States; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Wolfgang?
- In the United States, the national register counted 4,732 people named Wolfgang in 2020, about 1 in 70 thousand residents.
- How common is Wolfgang compared with other names?
- In Germany, Wolfgang is the 10th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Wolfgang?
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/wolfgangThe 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, “Wolfgang” — the 10th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.