Claus

given name · Danish · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Claus is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany. It appears chiefly in Danish and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: German form of Nicholas, representing a shortened form of Niclaus or Niklaus.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany1 in 1.4K◐
  • ATAustria1 in 5.7K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 111K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈24K ●

across 11 countries

Sources
256 ●

140K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 283 ◐

Denmark

Meaning & origin●

German form of Nicholas, representing a shortened form of Niclaus or Niklaus. In America this name tends to be associated with the figure of Santa Claus (originally Sankt Niklaus), which inhibits serious use of it.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Claus is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#27183,93284K rec.——Claus205
DK Denmark—20,723△46 rec.1 in 28321KClaus5
AT Austria#5832,9101K rec.—317Claus89
BR Brazil—1,150△10 rec.1 in 184K1.3KClaus5
NL Netherlands—1,090815 rec.—90Claus42
GB United Kingdom—1,0282K rec.——Claus54
AU Australia—8541.3K rec.—3Claus66
US United States—78041K rec.1 in 426K3.7KClaus256
SE Sweden—650△111 rec.1 in 16K650—25
TN Tunisia#449581634 rec.——Claus3
NO Norway—487△161 rec.1 in 11K1.4KClaus35
CA Canada—4831.2K rec.—1Claus67

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Danish119K45%
  • German93K35%
  • Portuguese19K7%
  • English14K5%
  • Spanish6.5K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Danish119,33845%
German93,25035%
Portuguese18,7527%
English13,7045%
Spanish6,4732%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Claus is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Danish given name129K records spelled Claus29 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Norway, Finland

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Finnish

    Also written Klaus, เคล้าส์, เคลาส์, คลอส, เคล้าสี

  • Portuguese given name37K records spelled Claus10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, United States

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Clau'S, Claüs, Çläüs, Claús, Cláus

  • Arabic given name513 records spelled Claus3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Türkiye

    Also written Ĉlāūś

63 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Claus 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.

  • In German, a male given name, a less common variant of Klaus

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Danish, a male given name derived from Nikolaus

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Patronymische Kurzform zu Nikolaus (griech. níkē „Sieg“ + laós „(Kriegs-)Volk“); zeigt C-Schreibung im Anlaut; 6212 Träger.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, Schreibvarianten mit -ss/-ß im Auslaut nach Vokal; Karte zeigt Dentale: Affrikaten und Frikative. 468/1529 Träger.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, zu Nikolaus (Rufname)

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen

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.

Over time●

05101518801900192019401960198013 · 1916

Show as table
Claus in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–1980
Yearrecords
18807
18855
18875
18906
18917
18956
18988
19015
19076
19115
19127
19136
19145
19156
191613
19177
19186
19198
19205
19218
19228
19238
19249
192512
19267
19275
19298
19307
19316
19327
19347
193611
19416
19495
19526
19545
19558
195611
19578
19586
195911
19605
19619
19625
196310
19647
19659
19666
19676
19686
19696
19805

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 52 years between 1880–1980. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

12001400160018002000Claus Sluter, b. 1340Claus Schilling, b. 1871Claus Clausen, b. 1899Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, b. 1907Claus Holm, b. 1918Claus Biederstaedt, b. 1928Claus Wilcke, b. 1939Claus Peter Flor, b. 1953William Alexander of the Netherlands, b. 1967Claus Norreen, b. 1970

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).

Evidence●

Attested in 77 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Claus
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—21K#31
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20084.1K#165
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—3.8K#172
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.7K#8,911
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.6K#8,393
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203.4K#9,102
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.4K#1,324
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—1.3K#7,968
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20221.1K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.1K#7,527
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020780#14,831
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—650#2,295

Reference works 8

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 555 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Claus?
We estimate roughly 24 thousand people bear Claus (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Claus have the most bearers?
Claus is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled claus.
Where is Claus most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Claus is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 283 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
How common is Claus compared with other names?
In Germany, Claus is the 271st most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
Is Claus a male or female name?
Claus is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Claus mean?
Recorded meaning: German form of Nicholas, representing a shortened form of Niclaus or Niklaus.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/claus

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Claus” — the 271st most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Claus parses inside a full name →