Bernstein
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) ‘Person from Bernstein’, the name of two places in Germany; (ii) an invented Jewish surname based on German Bernstein ‘amber’ (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈbɝnstaɪn/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Bernstein is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 17,916 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Bernstein is also written 번스타인 in Korean (Hangul) and בערנשטיין in Hebrew.
- ILIsrael≈1 in 8.5Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 17K
- USUnited States1 in 19K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 441 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 8.5K (inferred from the name graph)
17,916 people, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Israel, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Bernstein in other scripts: Korean (Hangul) and Hebrew
(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.
How to pronounce Bernstein
- English:/ˈbɝnstaɪn/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)(i) ‘Person from Bernstein’, the name of two places in Germany; (ii) an invented Jewish surname based on German Bernstein ‘amber’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Bernstein is found
(measured from records)Bernstein 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | 17,916 | 1 in 19K | 18K | Bernstein | 441 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Bernstein | 2 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Bernstein | 134 |
| DE Germany | ≈3,100 est. | ≈1 in 27K | — | Bernstein | 111 |
| CA Canada | ≈2,400 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Bernstein | 132 |
| IL Israel | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 8.5K | — | Bernstein | 64 |
17,916 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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. 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)Bernstein 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, from ONs, mostly from Bär II; also the mineral name
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, Leonard, US conductor, composer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, I. Carl, US journalist
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, amber
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Croatian, američki dirigent i skladatelj; u klasičnim djelima vješto koristi židovske liturgičke teme i jazz ritam ( Misa , Priča sa zapadne strane )
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)- Eduard Bernsteinb. 1850DEGerman politician and theorist (1850–1932)
- Leonard Bernsteinb. 1918USAmerican conductor and composer (1918–1990)
- Elmer Bernsteinb. 1922USAmerican composer and conductor (1922-2004)
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)36 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bernstein mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘Person from Bernstein’, the name of two places in Germany; (ii) an invented Jewish surname based on German Bernstein ‘amber’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Bernstein?
- In English /ˈbɝnstaɪn/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Bernstein?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Bernstein, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bernstein. After it come Pakistan, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Bernstein?
- In the United States, the national register counted 17,916 people named Bernstein in 2010, about 1 in 19 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bernstein?
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/bernsteinThe 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, “Bernstein” — ranked 1834th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.