Fingerhut
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: invented Jewish name for a tailor, literally ‘finger-hat’ (thimble)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈfɪŋɐˌhuːt/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Fingerhut is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- DEGermany
- USUnited States
- GBUnited Kingdom
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)invented Jewish name for a tailor, literally ‘finger-hat’ (thimble).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Fingerhut is read
(measured from records)Fingerhut 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.
- English64%
invented Jewish name for a tailor, literally ‘finger-hat’ (thimble).
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- German23%
from Fingerhut 'thimble'; tailor or seamstress-related byname
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from Finger 'finger' + Hut 'cap, thimble'.
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
occupational name for a tailor; from thimble
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
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)Fingerhut 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.
Name existing in the area of Under Rhine, Baden 1809.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
taken by a tailor, from mod. Ger. Fingerhut, Y'\d. fingerhut thimble (lit. ‘finger hat’). The vocab. word also means ‘fox¬ glove’, but this sense is not relevant to the surname.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)- Vojtěch Náprstekb. 1826CZnot in their usual nameCzech traveller (1826-1894)
- Moses Baderb. 1875CZnot in their usual nameHolocaust victim (born 1875)
- Helmut Fingerhutb. 1921DEGerman politician (1921-2016)
- Arden Fingerhutb. 1945American lighting designer (1945–1994)
- Margaret Fingerhutb. 1955GBBritish classical pianist
- Eric Fingerhutb. 1959USAmerican politician, attorney, and academic administrator
- Joerg Fingerhutb. 1976DEGerman philosopher (1976-)
- Štěpánka Ligasb. 1996CZnot in their usual nameCzech actress
- Abraham FingerhutShanghai medical researcher
- Legana C H W FingerhutAUresearcher (ORCID 0000-0002-2482-5336)
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)22 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 518 | #39,885 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 488 | #44,109 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 472 | #48,348 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 62 | #9,629 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 61 | #24,996 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 12 | #53,184 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 11 | #62,329 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 7 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 5 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 5 | #194,734 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 5 | #54,851 |
Reference works 5
- 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
- Kotík, Antonín, Naše příjmení (nové vydání, 1897)
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 Fingerhut mean, and where does it come from?
- invented Jewish name for a tailor, literally ‘finger-hat’ (thimble). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Fingerhut?
- In German /ˈfɪŋɐˌhuːt/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Fingerhut have the most bearers?
- Fingerhut is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Fingerhut?
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/fingerhutThe 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, “Fingerhut”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.