Ziel
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: destination, goal
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈziɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ziel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 774K(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands1 in 57K
- DEGermany≈1 in 128K
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
- 162 (measured from records)
- 1 in 57K (inferred from the name graph)
≈630 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
destination, goal
Sources 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of German
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ziel is read(measured from records)
Ziel 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.
- English67%
Sweet
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- German14%
destination, goal
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
singular imperative of zielen
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
from 'boundary point, goal'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Ziel 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 | ≈630 est. | ≈1 in 128K | — | Ziel | 68 |
| US United States | 430 | 1 in 774K | 534 | Ziel | 162 |
| NL Netherlands | 302 | 1 in 57K | 302 | Ziel | 38 |
| GH Ghana | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 133K | — | Ziel | 2 |
| CA Canada | ≈90 est. | ≈1 in 421K | — | Ziel | 21 |
| AT Austria | ≈43 est. | ≈1 in 208K | — | Ziel | 4 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈25 est. | ≈1 in 194K | — | Ziel | 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007). 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)
Ziel 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 Dutch, soul (animate principle in non-materialist anthropologies)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Luxembourgish, second-person singular imperative of zielen
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)
- Ernst Zielb. 1818DEGerman classical philologist and high school teacher (1818-1899)
- Ernst Zielb. 1841DEGerman journalist (1841–1921)
- Ron Zielb. 1939USAmerican railway historian (1939-2016)
- Alwin Zielb. 1941DEGerman politician
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 23 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 534 | #38,890 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 516 | #44,751 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 430 | #48,995 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 302 | #6,809 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Ziel mean, and where does it come from?
- destination, goal Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of German.
- What are other forms of the name Ziel?
- In the etymology graph, Seele and Цель are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ziel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈziɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Ziel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 626 people named Ziel in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ziel.
- Where is Ziel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ziel is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 57 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Ziel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 430 people named Ziel in 2010, about 1 in 774 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Ziel?
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/zielThe 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, “Ziel”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.