Ott
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: From the medieval personal name Ode, reinforced by Old Norse Oda/Odda and Continental Germanic Odo/Otto; all from names beginning with ord ‘point of a weapon’ or od ‘wealth’ (Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history])
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ɔt/(recorded in a dictionary) German · from Wiktionary
Ott is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country. Ott is also written 오트 in Korean (Hangul).
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- LILiechtenstein≈1 in 2.3K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 2.6K
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 Ott itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 428 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈36,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Liechtenstein, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Ott in other scripts: Korean (Hangul)
(measured from records)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 Ott
- German:/ɔt/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)From the medieval personal name Ode, reinforced by Old Norse Oda/Odda and Continental Germanic Odo/Otto; all from names beginning with ord ‘point of a weapon’ or od ‘wealth’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ott is read
(measured from records)Ott is one spelling over 2 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.
- English67%
From the medieval personal name Ode, reinforced by Old Norse Oda/Odda and Continental Germanic Odo/Otto; all from names beginning with ord ‘point of a weapon’ or od ‘wealth’.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Initialism of over the top.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German16%
Apokopierte Form zu Rufname Otto < germ. *auda-, ahd. ōt, as. ōd 'Besitz, Reichtum'; Bearer count: 13.904.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
patronymisch zu Rufname Otto; Belege u.a. Ott 1390. Vorkommen: Schweiz Ott(o) 1624+143, Otte(n) 18+25; Österreich Ott(o) 930+239, Otte(n) 73+12.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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 Ott is found
(measured from records)Ott 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 | #124 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Ott | 207 |
| US United States | — | 25,738 | 1 in 13K | 26K | Ott | 428 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈3,900 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 352 | Ott | 94 |
| FR France | — | ≈3,700 est. | ≈1 in 18K | 483 | — | 5 |
| CH Switzerland | #142 | 3,234 | 1 in 2.6K | 3.2K | Ott | 79 |
| AT Austria | #395 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 4.7K | — | Ott | 78 |
| IE Ireland | #996 | ≈580 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | — | Ott | 10 |
| LI Liechtenstein | — | ≈18 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 63 | — | 16 |
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; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Statistik Liechtenstein — Familiennamenstatistik (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)Ott is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Germanique; variante du groupe d’Aldo, sens « ancien ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In cdo, to boil, to stew, to roast, to conk, to stew, to leave things to simmer over the fire
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
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)- Eugen Ottb. 1889DEGerman general, ambassador (1889-1977)
- Carlos Ottb. 1946UYUruguayan-Canadian architect (born 1946)
- Alice Sara Ottb. 1988DEGerman classical pianist
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)50 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Ott mean, and where does it come from?
- From the medieval personal name Ode, reinforced by Old Norse Oda/Odda and Continental Germanic Odo/Otto; all from names beginning with ord ‘point of a weapon’ or od ‘wealth’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Ott?
- In the etymology graph, Oddo, Odo and Audo are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ott?
- In German /ɔt/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Ott?
- Mondonomo estimates about 36 thousand people named Ott in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ott. After it come United States, United Kingdom, France and Switzerland; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Ott?
- In the United States, the national register counted 25,738 people named Ott in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
- How common is Ott compared with other names?
- In Germany, Ott is the 124th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ott?
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/ottThe 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, “Ott” — the 124th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.