Pohl
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in German: Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term (pōl 'pool, marsh'); bearer count 17009
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 24 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/ˈpoʊɫ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pohl is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Germany it is the 87th most common surname.
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 4.3Kas Paul
- ETEthiopia≈1 in 12Kas Paulos
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 Pohl 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 334 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.1K (inferred from the name graph)
78,256 named Paul, 2010
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Paul in IN India, Pavlos in BE Belgium and ጳውሎስ in ET Ethiopia.
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)Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term (pōl 'pool, marsh'); bearer count 17009.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pohl is read
(measured from records)Pohl 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.
- English44%
Frederick, US writer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- German41%
Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term (pōl 'pool, marsh'); bearer count 17009.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
a post or pole, particularly a traffic bollard
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)Pohl 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 78,256as Paul | 1 in 4.3K | 906K | Pohl | 334 |
| DE Germany | #87 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | listed | Pohl | 210 |
| IN India | — | 21,842as Paul | 1 in 61K | 22K | Paul | 18 |
| ET Ethiopia | #521 | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 12K | listed | ጳውሎስ | 13 |
| ES Spain | — | 2,519as Pol | 1 in 20K | 24K | Pohl | 20 |
| GY Guyana | — | 2,066as Paul | 1 in 363 | 2.1K | — | 1 |
| BE Belgium | — | 1,902as Paulus | 1 in 6.2K | 1.9K | Pavlos | 18 |
| CZ Czechia | — | 968 | 1 in 11K | 971 | — | 1 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 797as Paul | 1 in 11K | 797 | Pohl | 35 |
78,256 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling paul. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); MVČR — living population register 2017; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Hugo von Pohlb. 1855PLGerman admiral (1855–1916)
- Klaus Pohlb. 1883ATAustrian actor (1883-1958)
- Robert Wichard Pohlb. 1884DEGerman physicist (1884–1976)
- Oswald Pohlb. 1892DEGerman SS functionary, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, convicted war criminal (1892-1951)
- Frederik Pohlb. 1919USAmerican science fiction writer and editor (1919–2013)
- Leonhard Pohlb. 1929DEWest German sprinter
- Ernest Pohlb. 1932PLPolish footballer (1932–1995)
- Walter Pohlb. 1953ATAustrian historian
- Marie Pohlb. 1979DEGerman actor, journalist and author
- Lucie Pohlb. 1983DEGerman actress (born 1983)
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)39 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.5K | #5,369 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 6.4K | #5,256 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.4K | #5,027 |
| CZ Czechia | KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end) | — | 971 | #1,391 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 968 | #1,410 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 355 | #3,724 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 92 | #29,224 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 92 | #29,046 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 82 | #18,087 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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 Pohl mean, and where does it come from?
- Toponymic surname from a place/landscape term (pōl 'pool, marsh'); bearer count 17009. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Pohl?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈpoʊɫ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pohl have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 78 thousand people named Paul, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Pohl?
- In Czechia, the national register counted 968 people named Pohl, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How common is Pohl compared with other names?
- In Germany, Pohl is the 87th most common surname of 765,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pohl?
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/pohlThe 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, “Pohl” — the 87th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.