Moos
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname from Moos ‘Sumpf, Moor’ (< mhd., mnd
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/muːz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Moos is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 16K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 22K
- USUnited States1 in 183K
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)
- Sources
- 245 (measured from records)
- 1 in 8.9K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,600 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Toponymic surname from Moos ‘Sumpf, Moor’ (< mhd., mnd. mos / mnd. mōr); variants show forms with -h- and -ss/ß. Bearers: Moos 1706; Mohs 384; Moss 246; Moß 201.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Moos 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 | — | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Moos | 115 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Moos | 29 |
| US United States | — | 1,821 | 1 in 183K | 1.9K | Moos | 245 |
| CH Switzerland | #536 | 946 | 1 in 8.9K | 946 | Moos | 59 |
| DK Denmark | — | 479 | 1 in 12K | 479 | — | 2 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 76 | 1 in 45K | 76 | Moos | 6 |
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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Moos 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, Toponymic surname: from mnd. mōr/mos ‘marsh, bog’; variants Mohs, Moss, Moß.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In German, topographic name for someone who lived by a peat bog. Middle High German mos.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, zu mhd./mäss. 'Moos, Sumpf, Moosboden'; auch zu ON
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, variant of Maas.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In hrx, moss (any of various small, green, seedless plants growing on the ground or on the surfaces of trees, stones, etc.)
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)
- Salomon Moosb. 1831DEGerman otologist (1831–1895)
- Carl Moosb. 1878DESwiss artist (1878-1959)
- Gustave Moosb. 1905CHcyclist (1905-1948)
- Lotte Moosb. 1909DEBritish writer
- Petr Moosb. 1946CZCzech politician (1946–2024)
- Jeanne Moosb. 1950USCNN reporter
- Alexandre Moosb. 1972CHSwiss road bicycle racer
- Anke Rehlingerb. 1976DEnot in their usual nameGerman politician
- Carolyn Moosb. 1978USAmerican basketball player (born 1978)
- Moritz Moosb. 1994DEGerman rower
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 34 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,671 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.9K | #15,231 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.8K | #15,955 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 946 | #1,258 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 479 | #900 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 76 | — |
| 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
- Where does the name Moos come from?
- Toponymic surname from Moos ‘Sumpf, Moor’ (< mhd., mnd. mos / mnd. mōr); variants show forms with -h- and -ss/ß. Bearers: Moos 1706; Mohs 384; Moss 246; Moß 201. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- What are other forms of the name Moos?
- In the etymology graph, Moss, Moussa and Mose are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Moos?
- A machine transcription gives /muːz/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Moos mean?
- Recorded meaning: Toponymic surname from Moos ‘Sumpf, Moor’ (< mhd., mnd.
- In which country does Moos have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.6 thousand people named Moos in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled moos.
- Where is Moos most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Moos is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 8.9 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Moos?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,821 people named Moos in 2010, about 1 in 183 thousand residents.
- How common is Moos compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Moos is the 536th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Moos?
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/moosThe 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, “Moos” — the 536th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.