Motter

surname · Latin script

Meaning: topographic name from Middle High German mot ‘mud’, ‘mire’ + the suffix -er denoting an inhabitant

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

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

Motter is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 115K(measured from records)
  • GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 154K
  • CNChina≈1 in 56K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈25,000 people, est.

Sources
262 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 56K (inferred from the name graph)

China, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

topographic name from Middle High German mot ‘mud’, ‘mire’ + the suffix -er denoting an inhabitant.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Motter 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 Motter is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China≈25,000 est.≈1 in 56K—Motter1
US United States2,8971 in 115K2.9KMotter262
BR Brazil1,6221 in 131K1.6K—1
DZ Algeria≈560 est.≈1 in 76K—Motter1
GB United Kingdom≈430 est.≈1 in 154K—Motter12
SG Singapore≈72 est.≈1 in 86K—Motter1
JM Jamaica≈29 est.≈1 in 96K—Motter1

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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)

Motter is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Argentina, United States, Dominican Republic

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Mötter

  • Norwegian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Iceland

    Languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish

    Also written Mötter

35 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

190019201940196019802000Alex Motter, b. 1913Klara Motter, b. 1935Dean Motter, b. 1953Adilson E. Motter, b. 1974Taylor Motter, b. 1989

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 Motter,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 13 sources across 7 countries.

Official registers attesting Motter
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.9K#10,979
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002.8K#10,657
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.4K#12,164
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.6K#5,921
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Motter mean, and where does it come from?
topographic name from Middle High German mot ‘mud’, ‘mire’ + the suffix -er denoting an inhabitant. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Motter?
A machine transcription gives /ˈmɑtɝ/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Motter have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 25 thousand people named Motter in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled motter.
How common is the name Motter?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,897 people named Motter in 2010, about 1 in 115 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Motter?

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

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

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, “Motter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Motter parses inside a full name →