Singer
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) ‘singer, choir member’, or a medieval nickname for someone always singing; also ‘cantor in a synagogue’ from Yiddish; (ii) from a different form of the German surname Sanger, literally ‘poet’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sɪŋə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Singer is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- ATAustria≈1 in 4.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 6.6K
- CACanada≈1 in 11K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 478 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
25,828 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Austria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) ‘singer, choir member’, or a medieval nickname for someone always singing; also ‘cantor in a synagogue’ from Yiddish; (ii) from a different form of the German surname Sanger, literally ‘poet’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Singer is read(measured from records)
Singer 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.
- English77%
(i) ‘singer, choir member’, or a medieval nickname for someone always singing; also ‘cantor in a synagogue’ from Yiddish; (ii) from a different form of the German surname Sanger, literally ‘poet’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from OE singan ‘to sing’; first attested Lucas le Syngere 1296 SRSx
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
A person who sings, often professionally.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German6.0%
Berufsname zu mhd. senger, singer 'Sänger, Liederdichter, Spielmann, Kantor'; 5034 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
Berufsname: Sänger/Musikant; 5034 Träger. Varianten: Singer(t).
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
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)
Singer 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 | — | 25,828 | 1 in 13K | 26K | Singer | 478 |
| DE Germany | #498 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | listed | Singer | 170 |
| EG Egypt | — | ≈4,900 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Singer | 44 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 2.2K | Singer | 184 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈3,500 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Singer | 178 |
| AT Austria | #214 | ≈2,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Singer | 98 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 804 | 1 in 10K | 804 | Singer | 46 |
| NZ New Zealand | #932 | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Singer | 41 |
25,828 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; the dfa-band-5 register; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Singer is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Romanian, , boier mold., sec. XV (Gane) ; din satul Stngerii (Arh) ; Grui Singer ; subst.
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
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)
- Isaac Singerb. 1811USAmerican businessman; inventor of the Singer sewing machine (1811-1875)
- Isaac Bashevis Singerb. 1903USPolish-American writer (1904–1991)
- Rolf Singerb. 1906DEGerman mycologist (1906–1994)
- Isadore Singerb. 1924USAmerican mathematician (1924–2021)
- Maxine Singerb. 1931USAmerican molecular biologist (1931–2024)
- Peter Singerb. 1946AUAustralian moral philosopher (born 1946)
- Lori Singerb. 1957USAmerican actress and classical musician
- Bryan Singerb. 1965USAmerican film director and producer
- Eric Warren Singerb. 1968USAmerican screenwriter
- Josh Singerb. 1972USAmerican screenwriter
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 43 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 26K | #1,366 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 26K | #1,261 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 25K | #1,400 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 2.2K | #3,321 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 804 | #1,515 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 5 | — | — | — |
| 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 Singer mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) ‘singer, choir member’, or a medieval nickname for someone always singing; also ‘cantor in a synagogue’ from Yiddish; (ii) from a different form of the German surname Sanger, literally ‘poet’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Singer?
- In the etymology graph, Sing, Cantor and Caller are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Singer?
- A machine transcription gives /sɪŋə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Singer have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 26 thousand people named Singer, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled singer.
- How common is the name Singer?
- In the United States, the national register counted 25,828 people named Singer in 2010, about 1 in 13 thousand residents.
- How common is Singer compared with other names?
- In Austria, Singer is the 214th most common surname of 127,275 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Singer?
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/singerThe 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, “Singer” — the 214th most common surname in Austria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.