Winter
loc · Latin script
Meaning: From a medieval nickname for a wintry temperament; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla-Gheiinlridli ‘son of the servant of Geimhreadh’; or an invented/imposed Jewish surname based on German Winter
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/wɪntə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Winter is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 5.1K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 11K
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.6K
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 492 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.6K (inferred from the name graph)
≈52,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Winter- in DE Germany, AT Austria.
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)
From a medieval nickname for a wintry temperament; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla-Gheiinlridli ‘son of the servant of Geimhreadh’; or an invented/imposed Jewish surname based on German Winter.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Winter 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 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Winter- | 246 |
| US United States | 31,310 | 1 in 11K | 31K | Winter | 492 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | 124 | Winter | 247 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Winter | 5 |
| NL Netherlands | ≈6,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 11 | — | 98 |
| AU Australia | ≈5,200 est. | ≈1 in 4.9K | 15 | Winter | 202 |
| AT Austria | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Winter- | 117 |
| GY Guyana | 324 | 1 in 2.3K | 324 | — | 9 |
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); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017). 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)
Winter is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Winter-season, only found in the north of Baden. Winter as short form in the US. Place name.
as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History
In German, German surname from the season name 'winter'; likely a personal-characteristic nickname (winter-born or winter-like). Bearer count: 1448; also many local attestations.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, Nickname from the season 'winter'; also sometimes to the given name Winther/Winithari or as a role in winter plays.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
In German, from winter; also house/field name 'north side'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In German, Personal characteristic (biographical): winter; byname referring to the season or a winter-born person. Bearer count: 21863.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen
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)
- Johnny Winterb. 1944USAmerican blues guitarist and singer (1944–2014)
- Edgar Winterb. 1946USAmerican musician
- Greg Winterb. 1951GBBritish biochemist (born 1951)
- Ralph Winterb. 1952USAmerican film producer (born 1952)
- Terence Winterb. 1960USAmerican television and film writer
- Alex Winterb. 1965GBBritish actor
- Rainn Wilsonb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, comedian, producer, and writer
- Aron Winterb. 1967NLDutch association football player and manager (born 1967)
- Eric Winterb. 1976USAmerican actor (born 1976)
- Ariel Winterb. 1998USAmerican actress
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 72 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 31K | #1,119 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 31K | #1,119 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 31K | #1,043 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 324 | #327 |
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 Winter mean, and where does it come from?
- From a medieval nickname for a wintry temperament; or from Irish Gaelic Mac Giolla-Gheiinlridli ‘son of the servant of Geimhreadh’; or an invented/imposed Jewish surname based on German Winter. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Winter?
- In the United States, the national register counted 31,310 people named Winter in 2010, about 1 in 11 thousand residents.
- How do you pronounce Winter?
- A machine transcription gives /wɪntə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Winter have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 52 thousand people named Winter in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled winter-.
What do you want to know about Winter?
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/winterThe 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, “Winter”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.