Kurzweil
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: amusement, diversion, pastime (light pleasant entertainment)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026
/ˈkəɹts.vaɪl/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Kurzweil is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)nickname for a joker, from German Kurzweil ‘pastime’, ‘amusement’, ‘entertainment’, a compound of kurz ‘short’ -lWeile ‘while’, ‘short time’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kurzweil is read
(measured from records)Kurzweil 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%
tdmkfor optical scanning devices
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German20%
amusement, diversion, pastime (light pleasant entertainment)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Kurzweil counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
| Country | Most common spelling | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 363 | — |
| CZ Czechia | — | 41 | — |
| PL Poland | — | 9 | — |
| FR France | — | 5 | — |
| BE Belgium | — | 3 | — |
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; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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)Kurzweil 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.
nickname for a joker, from German Kurzweil ‘pastime’, ‘amusement’, ‘entertainment’, a compound of kurz ‘short’ -lWeile ‘while’, ‘short time’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)- Max Kurzweilb. 1867CZAustrian painter and printmaker (1867-1916)
- Baruch Kurzweilb. 1907ILliterary critic (1907–1972)
- Adele Kurzweilb. 1925ATAustrian Holocaust victim
- Jaroslav Kurzweilb. 1926CZCzech mathematician
- Edith Kurzweilb. 1926USAmerican editor
- Hans Kurzweilb. 1942DEGerman mathematician
- Ray Kurzweilb. 1948USAmerican computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist and inventor (born 1948)
- Arthur Kurzweilb. 1951USAmerican writer
- Allen Kurzweilb. 1960USAmerican novelist, journalist, editor, and lecturer
- Amy Kurzweilb. 1986USAmerican cartoonist
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)16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 363 | #56,310 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 353 | #54,643 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 351 | #61,734 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 41 | #11,691 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 40 | #34,328 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 9 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 9 | #143,335 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 7 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 7 | #166,474 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 7 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 6 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 5 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Where does the name Kurzweil come from?
- nickname for a joker, from German Kurzweil ‘pastime’, ‘amusement’, ‘entertainment’, a compound of kurz ‘short’ -lWeile ‘while’, ‘short time’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Kurzweil?
- It depends on the language: in English /ˈkəɹts.vaɪl/ (Wiktionary); in German /ˈkʊʁt͡svaɪ̯l/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Kurzweil mean?
- In German, amusement, diversion, pastime (light pleasant entertainment)
- In which country does Kurzweil have the most bearers?
- Kurzweil is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Kurzweil?
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/kurzweilThe 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, “Kurzweil”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.