Beer

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: either person from Beer/Beere/Bere, an English place-name, or from a nickname meaning bear

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/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.

rarermore common
  • 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)

41,715 named Bora

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
360 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BeerLatin(measured from records)
বরBengali(measured from records)
เบอะThai(measured from records)
బీరTelugu(measured from records)

5 other spellings are counted as the same name:

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

Sources 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.

Where Beer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IN India—41,715as Bora1 in 32K42KBari140
ZA South Africa#213≈40,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Beer106
IT Italy—≈10,000 est.≈1 in 6K9Beer20
US United States—8,252as Bear1 in 40K9KBeer360
TR Türkiye—≈5,900 est.≈1 in 14K—Bor52
CH Switzerland—2,572as Bär1 in 3.3K2.6KBeer47
NO Norway—1,280as Bore1 in 4.3K1.3K—10
SK Slovakia—723as Bari1 in 7.5K723—8
CZ Czechia—2811 in 38K281Bor21

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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Beer is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Austria, Switzerland

    Also written Béer, Beèr

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Beër, Beér, Béer

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

    Also written Bêer, Beér

  • Russian surname45 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Polish, Czech

    Also written Бир, Беер, Бер, Беэр, Ber

67 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

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)

1700180019002000Wilhelm Beer, b. 1797August Beer, b. 1825George Louis Beer, b. 1872Edith Hahn Beer, b. 1914Jacqueline Beer, b. 1932Erich Beer, b. 1946Nicola Beer, b. 1970Eli Beer, b. 1973Paula Beer, b. 1995Madison Beer, b. 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)

FormalDear Mr Beer,
InformalHi Beer,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 41 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Beer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1974741—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1967718—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1972689—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1984681—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1973665—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1982663—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1969660—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1983659—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1988656—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1976651—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1985648—
IN Indianaampy — India given names from state electoral rolls (in-rolls)1975645—

Reference works 5

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?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/beer

The 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 2026-10-10.

See how Beer parses inside a full name →