Sperling

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus)

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

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

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 8.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CACanada≈1 in 50K
  • USUnited States1 in 79K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈9,600 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
335 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 8.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

SperlingLatin(measured from records)
สเปอร์ลิ่งThai(measured from records)

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)

from Germanic *sparw- / *sper- 'sparrow'; with diminutive suffix -ling

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Sperling is read(measured from records)

Sperling 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.

  • English63%

    A European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus).

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

  • German21%

    from Germanic *sparw- / *sper- 'sparrow'; with diminutive suffix -ling

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    from a nickname comparing a person to a sparrow

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

    sparrow

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

    Übername aus dem Tiernamen 'Sperling' (Personenmerkmal: kleiner, lebhafter Mensch).

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

    Übername zu 'Sperling' (Vogelname; klein, Körpergröße); 5352 Belege.

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

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)

Sperling 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 Sperling is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#706≈9,600 est.≈1 in 8.4KlistedSperling151
US United States—4,2241 in 79K4.3KSperling335
BR Brazil—8201 in 258K820—3
CA Canada—≈750 est.≈1 in 50K—Sperling99
GB United Kingdom—≈580 est.≈1 in 113K186Sperling81
DK Denmark—2201 in 27K220Sperling47
JM Jamaica—≈51 est.≈1 in 55K—Sperling2
IS Iceland—≈22 est.≈1 in 16K—Sperling2

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; the dfa-band-5 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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)

Sperling is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Czechia, United States, Slovakia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Slovak

    Also written Šperling

  • Hebrew surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Israel, United States, Poland, Romania

    Also written שפרלינג, ספרלינג, Shperling

  • Russian surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, English

    Also written Шперлинг, Шперлінг, Shperling, Сперлинг, Schperling

37 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)

18001850190019502000Jacob Hirsch Sperling, b. 1837Leon Sperling, b. 1900Eduard Sperling, b. 1902Hilde Sperling, b. 1908Milton Sperling, b. 1912George Sperling, b. 1934Elliot Sperling, b. 1951Gene Sperling, b. 1958Paula von Sperling, b. 1990Andrea Sperling, b. 2000

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 32 sources across 19 countries.

Official registers attesting Sperling
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.3K#7,204
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020104.2K#7,841
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.9K#8,164
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—820#11,042
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—220#2,252
GB United KingdomSurnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register)2002186#22,345
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 5———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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

Where does the name Sperling come from?
from Germanic *sparw- / *sper- 'sparrow'; with diminutive suffix -ling Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
What does the name Sperling mean?
In English, A European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus).
In which country does Sperling have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 9.6 thousand people named Sperling in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sperling.
How common is the name Sperling?
In the United States, the national register counted 4,224 people named Sperling in 2010, about 1 in 79 thousand residents.
How common is Sperling compared with other names?
In Germany, Sperling is the 706th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Sperling?

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

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, “Sperling” — the 706th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Sperling parses inside a full name →