Dieter

given name · German · Latin script

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

Dieter is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is the 25th most common given name. It appears chiefly in German and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: a male given name from Old High German.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany1 in 218◐
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 2.1K
  • ATAustria1 in 2.3K

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

≈5.4K ●

across 12 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
253 ●

564K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 17K ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

DieterLatin · German●595K records
ดเตอรThai · Thai●0 records

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

a male given name from Old High German

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Dieter is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#25556,132524K rec.—2Dieter239
AT Austria#3247,1323.5K rec.—353Dieter128
BE Belgium#3904,7103.5K rec.—1Dieter117
CH Switzerland#1633,6441.4K rec.—12Dieter87
US United States—2,42720K rec.1 in 137K3.3KDieter253
GB United Kingdom—1,084887 rec.——Dieter83
ZA South Africa—855745 rec.——Dieter57
CA Canada—822806 rec.——Dieter78
PL Poland—7853.6K rec.1 in 49K785Dieter2
NL Netherlands—624602 rec.1 in 28K624Dieter60
SE Sweden—613△126 rec.1 in 17K613—36
BR Brazil—371△6 rec.1 in 571K403—2

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

Languages●

  • German595K90%
  • English24K4%
  • Spanish8.4K1%
  • Portuguese8.1K1%
  • Polish3.8K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
German595,25790%
English24,3444%
Spanish8,4341%
Portuguese8,1021%
Polish3,7911%

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◐

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

  • English given name54K records spelled Dieter2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Australia, United Kingdom, South Africa

    Also written Diëter

  • French given name4.6K records spelled Dieter3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Spain, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Diéter

  • Croatian given name1.2K records spelled Dieter20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Switzerland, United States, Belgium

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian

    Also written Diter, Diether, Дитер

62 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●

Dieter 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, )Diether['di:ther]:alterdeutscher männl. Vom. (ahd. thiot »Volk« + ahd. heri »Kriegsschar, Heer«); in neuerer Zeit wird

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In English, German form of Dietrich

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • German: from an old Germanic personal name composed of the elements peud people, race + hari , heri army, warrior. St Theuderius (d. c. 575) was a monk of Lérins who founded three monasteries near his native city of Vienne.

    as a word

  • In English, A person who diets, usually in an effort to lose weight.

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

  • In Swedish, indefinite plural of diet

    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.

Over time●

010203040196019802000202036 · 1967

Show as table
Dieter in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1953–2023
Yearrecords
195311
19546
195510
195614
195718
195817
195912
196020
196122
196233
196323
196426
196527
196634
196736
196825
196930
197025
197113
19728
197316
197415
197520
19769
197714
19786
197912
198013
19817
19828
19837
19847
19858
198619
198715
19886
198913
199015
199113
199217
19937
199412
19959
199612
19978
19987
19996
200012
20016
200212
200312
200411
200513
200613
20079
20087
20096
201016
201112
20129
20135
201411
20159
20168
20176
20188
20197
20226
20236

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 69 years between 1953–2023. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1920194019601980Dieter Hildebrandt, b. 1927Dieter Rams, b. 1932Horst Mahler, b. 1936Dieter Kehler, b. 1949Dieter Hoeneß, b. 1953Dieter Zetsche, b. 1953Dieter Bohlen, b. 1954Dieter Müller, b. 1954Dieter Hecking, b. 1964Dieter Eilts, b. 1964

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 68 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Dieter
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.3K#9,818
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020003.1K#9,708
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020203K#10,179
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.4K#6,559
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026785#292
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018)—624#1,422
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—619#603
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—613#2,398
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—403#16,383
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—383#2,379
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022371—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—370#16,429

Reference works 8

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 457 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Dieter?
We estimate roughly 5.4 thousand people bear Dieter (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Dieter have the most bearers?
Dieter is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled dieter.
How common is Dieter compared with other names?
In Germany, Dieter is the 25th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
Is Dieter a male or female name?
Dieter 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 Dieter mean?
Recorded meaning: a male given name from Old High German
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/dieter

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, “Dieter” — the 25th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Dieter parses inside a full name →