Wester
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname from west 'west' or a place/dwelling name with Wester-; bearer counts: Wester(s) 747+68
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈwɛstɝ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Wester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 10K(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 45K
- USUnited States1 in 64K
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)
- Sources
- 339 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
5,187 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Toponymic surname from west 'west' or a place/dwelling name with Wester-; bearer counts: Wester(s) 747+68.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Wester 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 | 5,187 | 1 in 64K | 5.2K | Wester | 339 |
| SE Sweden | 2,891 | 1 in 3.5K | 2.9K | Wester | 65 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Wester | 86 |
| NL Netherlands | 1,666 | 1 in 10K | 1.7K | Wester | 54 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈570 est. | ≈1 in 115K | 68 | Wester | 53 |
| FI Finland | 541 | 1 in 10K | 541 | Wester | 9 |
| NO Norway | 264 | 1 in 21K | 264 | Wester | 7 |
| GA Gabon | ≈72 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 1 | — | 1 |
5,187 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Ministere de l'Interieur — 2025 candidate lists (local + legislative). 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)
Wester 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 English, ‘the westerner’; first attested Laurence le Westre 1327 SRSx
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In German, Toponymic surname from a western place/dwelling designation; bearer count 815.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
In English, A strong westerly wind, a wind blowing from the west.
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)
- August Westerb. 1882USOlympic wrestler (1882–1960)
- Peter Westerb. 1939SESwedish cinematographer
- John Charles Westerb. 1950USCatholic archbishop
- Frits Westerb. 1962NLDutch journalist and politician
- Petronella Westerb. 1969SESwedish actress
- Jennifer Westerb. 1985USAmerican ice dancer
- Julie Grundtvig Westerb. 1991DKDanish actress
- Lina Westerb. 1992SESwedish ice hockey player
- Tess Liederb. 1993NLnot in their usual nameDutch handball player
- Alexandra Westerb. 1994DEGerman long jumper
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 38 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 5.2K | #6,532 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.1K | #6,410 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.1K | #6,217 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 2.9K | #354 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 1.7K | #832 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 541 | #3,218 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 269 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 264 | #5,868 |
| GB United Kingdom | Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register) | 2002 | 68 | #42,127 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- 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 Wester mean, and where does it come from?
- Toponymic surname from west 'west' or a place/dwelling name with Wester-; bearer counts: Wester(s) 747+68. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Wester?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈwɛstɝ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Wester have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 5.2 thousand people named Wester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled wester.
- Where is Wester most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Wester is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 3.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Wester?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,187 people named Wester in 2010, about 1 in 64 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Wester?
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/westerThe 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, “Wester”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.