Beer
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: either person from Beer/Beere/Bere, an English place-name, or from a nickname meaning bear
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: naampy, 2017
/bɪɹ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Beer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in India than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- TRTürkiye≈1 in 14Kas Bor
- INIndia1 in 32Kas Bora
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Beer itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- India (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 360 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
41,715 named Bora
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Bor in TR Türkiye, CZ Czechia and Bari in IN India.
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)either person from Beer/Beere/Bere, an English place-name, or from a nickname meaning bear
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Beer is read
(measured from records)Beer is one spelling over 3 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.
- English55%
either person from Beer/Beere/Bere, an English place-name, or from a nickname meaning bear
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
An alcoholic drink fermented from starch material, commonly barley malt; often with hops or some other substance (like gruit) to impart a bitter flavor.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German16%
obsolete form of Beere
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Patronymisch zu germ. Rufname Ber(o) < Bernhard; Belegzahl: 6241. Im Raum auch Konkurrenz zu Bär-/Eber- und zu mnd. bēr 'Bier'.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
Familienname zu Rufname Bernhard; Kurzform/Abkürzung. Bearer count: 93 Tokens (PLZ 924 Schwandorf), 37 (927 Schirmitz), 52 (925 Nabburg), 185 (931 Burglengenfeld), 96 (956 Marktredwitz).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
- Hindi5.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Beer in Hindi.
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)Beer 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IN India | — | 41,715as Bora | 1 in 32K | 42K | Bari | 140 |
| ZA South Africa | #213 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Beer | 106 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6K | 9 | Beer | 20 |
| US United States | — | 8,252as Bear | 1 in 40K | 9K | Beer | 360 |
| TR Türkiye | — | ≈5,900 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Bor | 52 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 2,572as Bär | 1 in 3.3K | 2.6K | Beer | 47 |
| NO Norway | — | 1,280as Bore | 1 in 4.3K | 1.3K | — | 10 |
| SK Slovakia | — | 723as Bari | 1 in 7.5K | 723 | — | 8 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 281 | 1 in 38K | 281 | Bor | 21 |
41,715 people counted by Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls, counting the spelling bora. 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: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); MVČR — living population register 2017. 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)Beer 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.
It exists in about 20 towns, very common as a Jewish family name since the Middle Ages, but some cases of origin are not sure.
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)- Wilhelm Beerb. 1797DEastronomer and banker (1797–1850)
- August Beerb. 1825DEGerman scientist (1825-1863)
- George Louis Beerb. 1872USAmerican historian
- Edith Hahn Beerb. 1914ATAustrian Holocaust survivor (1914-2009)
- Jacqueline Beerb. 1932FRFrench actress
- Erich Beerb. 1946DEGerman footballer
- Nicola Beerb. 1970DEGerman politician
- Eli Beerb. 1973ILIsraeli activist; founder of United Hatzalah
- Paula Beerb. 1995DEGerman actress
- Madison Beerb. 1999USAmerican singer (born 1999)
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)41 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
Reference works 5
- 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
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 Beer mean, and where does it come from?
- either person from Beer/Beere/Bere, an English place-name, or from a nickname meaning bear Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Beer?
- In the etymology graph, Bier and Bär are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Beer?
- A machine transcription gives /bɪɹ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Beer have the most bearers?
- In India, the national register counted about 42 thousand people named Bora, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Beer?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 281 people named Beer, about 1 in 38 thousand residents.
- How common is Beer compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Beer is the 213th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Beer?
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/beerThe 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, “Beer” — the 213th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.