Koppel
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Middle Low German koppel ‘enclosed common pasture’, hence a topographic name for someone living near such pasture, or possibly a status name for a commoner, i.e
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈkɑpəɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Koppel is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 43K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 261K
- ILIsrael1 in 12Kas קופל
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Koppel itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 248 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,900 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Estonia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled קופל in IL Israel, RO Romania, Köppel in DE Germany and Koeppel in CH Switzerland.
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 Middle Low German koppel ‘enclosed common pasture’, hence a topographic name for someone living near such pasture, or possibly a status name for a commoner, i.e. someone who had the right to use such land for his livestock.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
How Koppel is read(measured from records)
Koppel is one spelling over 3 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.
- English64%
Ted, US newscaster
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German11%
'fenced pasture'; also place names
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
- Spanish6.4%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Koppel in Spanish.
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)
Koppel 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Köppel | 73 |
| RO Romania | — | ≈1,700 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | קופל | 2 |
| US United States | — | 1,273 | 1 in 261K | 1.3K | Koppel | 248 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 1,257 | 1 in 6.7K | 1.3K | Koeppel | 43 |
| EE Estonia | #486 | 991 | 1 in 1.2K | 991 | Koppel | 46 |
| IL Israel | — | 716as קופל | 1 in 12K | 716 | קופל | 31 |
| FI Finland | — | 298 | 1 in 19K | 298 | — | 3 |
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; CBS Israel — Family names in Israel, 2017 ("שמות משפחה בישראל 2017"); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Koppel is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from Middle Low German koppel ‘enclosed common pasture’, hence a topographic name for someone living near such pasture, or possibly a status name for a commoner, i.e. someone who had the right to use such land for his livestock.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the Silesian dialect word Koppel ‘head’, a nickname for someone with a visible deformity or peculiarity of the head.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
from the Yiddish personal name kopl, a pet form of Jakob (see Jacob).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Estonian, a pasture enclosed by a fence; a paddock
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)
- Leopold Koppelb. 1843DEGerman banker, industrialist, philanthropist and art collector persecuted by Nazis because Jewish (1843-1933)
- Walter Koppelb. 1906DEGerman film producer (1906-1982)
- Herman D. Koppelb. 1908DKDanish musician (1908–1998)
- Eva Koppelb. 1916DKarchitect
- Henning Koppelb. 1918DKDanish designer and sculptor (1918-1981)
- Ted Koppelb. 1940GBBritish-born American broadcast journalist (born 1940)
- Anders Koppelb. 1947DKDanish composer
- Moshe Koppelb. 1956ILIsraeli computer scientist
- Nikolaj Koppelb. 1969DKDanish musician and host
- Lily Koppelb. 1981USAmerican writer
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)
Attested in 28 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,443 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.3K | #20,758 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.2K | #20,367 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — Ees- ja perekonnanimed (Population Register) | — | 991 | #13 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 991 | #10 |
| EE Estonia | Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed) | — | 902 | #14 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 298 | #5,398 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Koppel mean, and where does it come from?
- from Middle Low German koppel ‘enclosed common pasture’, hence a topographic name for someone living near such pasture, or possibly a status name for a commoner, i.e. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Koppel?
- In the etymology graph, Jacobo, Jakab and Kobus are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Koppel?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈkɑpəɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Koppel have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.9 thousand people named Koppel in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled köppel.
- Where is Koppel most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Koppel is densest in Estonia — about 1 in 1.2 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Koppel?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,273 people named Koppel in 2010, about 1 in 261 thousand residents.
- How common is Koppel compared with other names?
- In Estonia, Koppel is the 486th most common surname of 37,297 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Koppel?
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/koppelThe 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, “Koppel” — the 486th most common surname in Estonia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.