Muster
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A gathering
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mʌstɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Muster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 52K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 741K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 12K
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
- 171 (measured from records)
- 1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,500 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Switzerland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
old form of Mostar ‘bridge keeper’, an agent derivative of must, an archaic spelling of most ‘bridge’. This name is also found in German-speaking countries.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Muster is read(measured from records)
Muster 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.
- English49%
A gathering.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German34%
pattern, model
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of German
singular imperative of mustern
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish5.7%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Muster 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Muster 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 | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 52K | — | Muster | 103 |
| AT Austria | — | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Muster | 45 |
| CH Switzerland | #996 | 727 | 1 in 12K | 727 | Muster | 48 |
| US United States | — | 449 | 1 in 741K | 484 | Muster | 171 |
| PL Poland | — | 128 | 1 in 299K | 65 | Muster | 1 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 107 | 1 in 20K | 107 | — | 2 |
| TC Turks & Caicos Islands | — | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Muster | 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 2000; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)
Muster 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 Dutch, old form of Mostar ‘bridge keeper’, an agent derivative of must, an archaic spelling of most ‘bridge’. This name is also found in German-speaking countries.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Dutch, 2. English: variant of Musters, a habitational name of Norman origin, from Les Moutiers-Hubert in Calvados, France.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In szl, design, pattern
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)
- Miki Musterb. 1925SISlovene illustrator and animator
- Bill Musterb. 1926USAmerican photographer (1926-1989)
- Michael Musterb. 1946DEGerman politician and lawyer
- Peter Musterb. 1952CHSwiss athletics competitor
- Kirsten Musterb. 1960DEGerman politician
- Thilo Musterb. 1965DESwiss organist
- Brad Musterb. 1965USAll-American college football player, professional football player, running back
- Thomas Musterb. 1967ATAustrian tennis player
- Christoph Musterb. 1969DEGerman scientist
- Melina Musterb. 1999DEGerman association football player
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 21 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 727 | #1,716 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 484 | #42,217 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 479 | #47,689 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 449 | #47,272 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 107 | #4,148 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 65 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 65 | #41,743 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 63 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 63 | #42,219 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
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 Muster come from?
- old form of Mostar ‘bridge keeper’, an agent derivative of must, an archaic spelling of most ‘bridge’. This name is also found in German-speaking countries. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Muster?
- A machine transcription gives /mʌstɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Muster mean?
- In English, A gathering.
- In which country does Muster have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.5 thousand people named Muster in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled muster.
- Where is Muster most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Muster is densest in Switzerland — about 1 in 12 thousand people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Muster?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 727 people named Muster in 2024, about 1 in 12 thousand residents.
- How common is Muster compared with other names?
- In Switzerland, Muster is the 996th most common surname of 127,759 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Muster?
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/musterThe 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, “Muster” — the 996th most common surname in Switzerland. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.