Karner
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Bavarian 'ossuary in the cemetery'; also other local meanings (Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 15 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/ˈkaʁnɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Karner is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Austria than in any other country, where it is the 92nd most common surname.
- ATAustria≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- SISlovenia1 in 9.6K
- DEGermany≈1 in 73K
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.
- Austria (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 198 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Kärner in EE Estonia.
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 Karner
- German:/ˈkaʁnɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Bavarian 'ossuary in the cemetery'; also other local meanings
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Where the surname Karner is found
(measured from records)Karner 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT Austria | #92 | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Karner | 105 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Karner | 84 |
| US United States | — | 989 | 1 in 336K | 1K | Karner | 198 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 220 | 1 in 9.6K | 220 | Karner | 5 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 339K | — | Karner | 34 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 25 | Kärner | 9 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | — | ≈1 est. | ≈1 in 68K | — | Karner | 1 |
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 2020; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)Karner is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, 1. from South German dialect Kamer ‘charnel house’, hence a metonymic occupational name for an undertaker. 2. in no^em Germany, a metonymic occupational name for a peddler who used a handcart or barrow, from Karren ‘cart’ + the -er agent suffix. 3. possibly a variant of Kerner or Korner (see Koerner) or an altered spelling of Garner, Gerner.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, bonehouse with a chapel
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, charnel house
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)- Gerhard Karnerb. 1967ATAustrian politician
- Philipp Karnerb. 1979ATAustrian actor
- Maximilian Karnerb. 1990ATAustrian footballer
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)27 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 15 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Karner mean, and where does it come from?
- Bavarian 'ossuary in the cemetery'; also other local meanings Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Karner?
- In German /ˈkaʁnɐ/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Karner?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.1 thousand people named Karner in Austria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karner. After it come Germany, United States, Slovenia and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Karner?
- In the United States, the national register counted 989 people named Karner in 2010, about 1 in 336 thousand residents.
- How common is Karner compared with other names?
- In Austria, Karner is the 92nd most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karner?
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/karnerThe 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, “Karner” — the 92nd most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.