Muster

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: A gathering (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries · latest register: dane.gov.pl, 2026

/ˈmʌs.tə/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary

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Muster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

  • ATAustria≈1 in 7.4Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 12K
  • SISlovenia1 in 20K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,800 people, est.

Record sources
171 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 7.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Austria, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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How to pronounce Muster

  • English:/ˈmʌs.tə/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • German:/ˈmʊstɐ/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • Spanish:/mustɛr/(machine-generated) model-generated

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

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.

Cited for this meaning 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 the surname Muster is found

(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.

Where Muster is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany—≈1,800 est.≈1 in 48K—Muster103
AT Austria—≈1,200 est.≈1 in 7.4K—Muster45
CH Switzerland#9967271 in 12K727Muster48
US United States—4491 in 741K484Muster171
PL Poland—1281 in 299K65Muster1
SI Slovenia—1071 in 20K107—2
TC Turks & Caicos Islands—≈1 est.≈1 in 34K—Muster1

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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Muster is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Chile, United States, Argentina, Switzerland

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Mùstér, Műstęř

  • Arabic surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, United States, Switzerland

    Also written Mūstër, Muşter, Műśtër, Mųšţēř

38 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

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)
1920194019601980Miki Muster, b. 1925Kirsten Muster, b. 1960Thomas Muster, b. 1967

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)
FormalDear Muster,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

21 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.

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?
It depends on the language: in English /ˈmʌs.tə/ (Wiktionary); in German /ˈmʊstɐ/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /mustɛr/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
What does the name Muster mean?
In English, A gathering.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Muster?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 thousand people named Muster in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled muster. After it come Austria, Switzerland, United States and Poland; the country table on this page ranks them.
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?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/muster

The 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 2026-10-13.

See how Muster parses inside a full name →