Krüger

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Occupational surname: innkeeper/tavern keeper (from Krug 'jug; inn'); bearer count 50,484

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

/ˈkʁyːɡɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Krüger is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 40th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 860(inferred from the name graph)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 1.1K
  • USUnited States1 in 9.1Kas Krueger

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 Krüger 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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈71,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
446 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 860 (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)

KruegerLatin(measured from records)
ครเกอรThai(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Krueger in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IE Ireland and Kruger in ZA South Africa, DK Denmark.

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)

Occupational surname: innkeeper/tavern keeper (from Krug 'jug; inn'); bearer count 50,484.

Sources 1

  • Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Krüger 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 Krüger is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#40≈71,000 est.≈1 in 1.1KlistedKrüger161
ZA South Africa#48≈66,000 est.≈1 in 860—Kruger139
US United States#48536,743as Krueger1 in 9.1K37KKrueger446
BR Brazil—12,5451 in 17K13K—4
GB United Kingdom—≈3,800 est.≈1 in 17K—Krueger139
NO Norway—9421 in 5.8K942Krüger20
DK Denmark—8671 in 6.8K867Kruger45
IE Ireland#636≈580 est.≈1 in 8.9K—Krueger23

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; the dfa-band-1 register; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)

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

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Krūger, Krûger, Kruger

  • Swahili surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: Swahili, Southern Sotho

    Also written Kruger

  • a separate surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, South Africa, United Kingdom, Norway

    Also written Kruger

  • Croatian surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, South Africa, United States, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Kruger, Крюгер, Кругер, Kri︠u︡ger, Kryuger

41 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)

Krüger 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, Occupational surname: innkeeper/tavern keeper.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

  • In German, innkeeper

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Berufsname zu mhd. krug ‘Krug’/Krüger ‘Krughersteller, Geschirrhändler’; die Plate zeigt Tonvokal-Varianten u/ü/ö/ue/oe und Schreibungen mit C/G.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Berufsname ‘Wirt’ zu mnd. kröger/krôger/krûger; die Karte zeigt ü/ö-Variation. Belege: 42737.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Berufsname zu mhd. krūg(e) ‘Krug, Gefäß’; Beleg 42737. Karte zeigt o/u ↔ ö/ü-Vokalvariation.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

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)

1850190019502000Walter Krüger, b. 1890Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, b. 1894Luise Krüger, b. 1915Franz-Otto Krüger, b. 1917Hardy Krüger, b. 1928Michael Krüger, b. 1943Christiane Krüger, b. 1945Mike Krüger, b. 1951Hardy Krüger Jr., b. 1968Simen Hegstad Krüger, b. 1993

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)

FormalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Dear Krüger, (English)
InformalSehr geehrte Damen und Herren,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Krüger
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—867#461
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1———

Reference works 7

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 Krüger mean, and where does it come from?
Occupational surname: innkeeper/tavern keeper (from Krug 'jug; inn'); bearer count 50,484. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen.
How do you pronounce Krüger?
A machine transcription gives /ˈkʁyːɡɐ/ (IPA) for German.
In which country does Krüger have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 71 thousand people named Krüger in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled krüger.
How common is the name Krüger?
In Brazil, the national register counted 12,545 people named Krüger, about 1 in 17 thousand residents.
How common is Krüger compared with other names?
In Germany, Krüger is the 40th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Krüger?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kr%C3%BCger

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, “Krüger” — the 40th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Krüger parses inside a full name →