Bauer

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: ‘peasant’, or a medieval German nickname meaning roughly ‘neighbour’, from MHG/Middle Low German bur ‘person who lives in a bur’

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Bauer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 11th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ATAustria≈1 in 496(inferred from the name graph)
  • DEGermany≈1 in 578
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 3.1K

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)

≈140,000 people, est.

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
511 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 496 (inferred from the name graph)

Austria, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BauerLatin(measured from records)
ბაუერGeorgian(measured from records)
บาวเออรThai(measured from records)

2 other spellings are 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)

‘peasant’, or a medieval German nickname meaning roughly ‘neighbour’, from MHG/Middle Low German bur ‘person who lives in a bur’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Bauer is read(measured from records)

Bauer 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.

  • English59%

    ‘peasant’, or a medieval German nickname meaning roughly ‘neighbour’, from MHG/Middle Low German bur ‘person who lives in a bur’.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

  • German24%

    Diminutive/hypocoristic forms of Bauer; variants with -le/-li/-lin. Bearer count not printed for this cluster.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

    occupational name for a peasant or farmer

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

    farmer

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German

    farmer (male or of unspecified gender)

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

    Verschiedene Herleitungen: Berufsname zu mhd. *(ge)biurlîn 'Bäuerlein', Herkunftsname zu mhd. beier 'Bayer', zu mhd. meier 'Meier, Oberbauer', Wohnstättenname zu mhd. schiurlîn 'kleine Scheune', auch Übername zu mhd. viur(e), viuwer 'Feuer'. Die Karte zeigt Diphthongierung/Monophthongierung von Bauer/Baur und verwandten Formen.

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

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)

Bauer 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 Bauer is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#11≈140,000 est.≈1 in 578listedBauer277
US United States#44665,0041 in 5.1K65KBauer511
AT Austria#5≈18,000 est.≈1 in 496—Bauer162
FR France—≈9,200 est.≈1 in 7.4K1.2K—11
DZ Algeria#144≈8,500 est.≈1 in 5.1K—Bauer4
CH Switzerland#692,6751 in 3.1K2.7KBauer92
CZ Czechia—2,2781 in 4.7K2.3K—3
IE Ireland#426≈1,300 est.≈1 in 4.1K—Bauer30

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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); MVČR — living population register 2017; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

Bauer is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Canada, Belgium

    Also written Bauër, Baüer, Bâüér, Bǎûěr, Bãûer

  • Russian surname27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish

    Also written Бауэр, Бауер, Bower, Bauėr, Baüer

  • Portuguese surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Portugal, Switzerland

    Also written Bauėr, Báuer, Bauér, Baüer

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Bauér, Bauèr, Baüer

  • Croatian surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, Bulgaria, Serbia

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Бауер, Baüer, Бауър, Baùer

70 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)

1400160018002000Georg Agricola, b. 1494Ferdinand Christian Baur, b. 1792Bruno Bauer, b. 1809Gustav Bauer, b. 1870Otto Bauer, b. 1881Belinda Bauer, b. 1950Steven Bauer, b. 1956Chris Bauer, b. 1966Jasna Fritzi Bauer, b. 1989Robert Bauer, b. 1995

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 Bauer,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 56 sources across 28 countries.

Official registers attesting Bauer
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201065K#517
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202063K#527
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200062K#484
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20242.7K#317
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—2.3K#494
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—2.3K#493
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—2.3K#493
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19911.2K—
DE GermanyDeutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 8

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

In which country does Bauer have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 139 thousand people named Bauer in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bauer.
What does the name Bauer mean, and where does it come from?
‘peasant’, or a medieval German nickname meaning roughly ‘neighbour’, from MHG/Middle Low German bur ‘person who lives in a bur’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Bauer?
A machine transcription gives /bawə/ (IPA) for English.
What are other forms of the name Bauer?
In the etymology graph, Boor is a form of the same name in other languages.
How common is the name Bauer?
In the United States, the national register counted 65,004 people named Bauer in 2010, about 1 in 5.1 thousand residents.
How common is Bauer compared with other names?
In Germany, Bauer is the 11th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bauer?

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

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, “Bauer” — the 11th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bauer parses inside a full name →