Müller

surname · German · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Müller is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname. It appears chiefly in German and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from occupational name Müller; here contrasted with dialectal Miller.

rarermore common
  • LULuxembourg1 in 45◐
  • DEGermany1 in 130
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 159

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

≈1.3M ●

across 12 countries

#93 ●

of 21M surnames

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
584 ●

12M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 159 ◐

Switzerland

Spellings & scripts●

MillerLatin · English●12M records
מילרHebrew · Hebrew●24K records
মিলারBengali · Bangla●1 records
ΜυλλερGreek · Greek●0 records
뮬러Hangul · Korean●0 records

3 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Miller in US United States, GB United Kingdom, CA Canada and 10 more, Muller in CH Switzerland, NL Netherlands, BE Belgium and 2 more, Millar in IE Ireland, NZ New Zealand and מילר in IL Israel.

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●

from occupational name Müller; here contrasted with dialectal Miller

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Müller is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#61,161,4379.9M rec.1 in 2861.2MMiller584
DE Germany#1851,960785K rec.—1Müller252
GB United Kingdom#10595,110532K rec.—21Miller277
CA Canada#6223,769219K rec.—17Miller252
AU Australia#10210,826201K rec.—1Miller259
IT Italy#859,44561K rec.—listedMiller92
CH Switzerland#152,889△14K rec.1 in 15953KMuller115
RU Russia—28,08829K rec.——Miller122
PH Philippines#51525,10726K rec.——Miller81
SG Singapore#1322,43224K rec.——Miller69
CN China#59421,79823K rec.——Miller47
AT Austria#119,42714K rec.—2Müller109

Roughly 1.2M people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 286). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

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

Languages●

  • German620K92%
  • Spanish31K5%
  • Portuguese5.2K1%
  • English2.3K1%
  • Danish2.3K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
German620,07692%
Spanish31,2205%
Portuguese5,2181%
English2,2891%
Danish2,2851%

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◐

Müller is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname41K records spelled Müller39 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Argentina, United States, Chile

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Muller, Mûller, Múller, Mullër, Müllër

  • a separate surname6.3K records spelled Müller6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Also written Muller, Műller, Mûller, Mŭller, Mūller

  • English surname5.9K records spelled Müller64 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, Thai, Dutch

    Also written Muller, Miller, Mueller, มิลเลอร์, มึลเลอร์

  • Russian surname5.1K records spelled Müller59 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Poland, United States, Kazakhstan

    Languages: Russian, Polish, Ukrainian

    Also written Миллер, Miller, Міллер, Miler, Міллєр

  • French surname2.6K records spelled Müller8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Switzerland

    Also written Muller, Mûller, Mūlļeř, Műller, Mùller

55 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●

Müller 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, German surname of Joh. Müller, Latinized as Regiomontanus.

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, occupation name; here cited as a common surname in towns

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, a common surname originating as an occupation

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

  • In German, Aus lat. molinae/molinarius; Berufsname 'Müller'. Belegt 258708 Träger. Die Karte zeigt die Vokalvarianz ü/ö/i in Müller-Namen; neben Müller auch Möller und Miller.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

  • In German, Berufsname zu mhd. mülner/müller 'Müller'; die Karte zeigt die Vokalvarianten ü/u, ö/o, e/i in den Schreibungen.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus

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●

175018001850190019502000Wilhelm Müller, b. 1794Friedrich Max Müller, b. 1823Hermann Müller, b. 1876Karl Alexander Müller, b. 1927Heiner Müller, b. 1929Gerd Müller, b. 1945Herta Müller, b. 1953Michael Müller, b. 1964Patrick Müller, b. 1976Thomas Müller, b. 1989

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 24 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Müller
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202453K#1
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—10K—
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—4.8K#156
CZ Czechianaše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot—4.8K#155
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—4.8K#155
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—2.2K#163
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20261.9K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—1.9K#1,468
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—1.7K#615
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20261.5K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—1.5K#1,952
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)20081.3K#991

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 28 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Müller?
We estimate roughly 1.3 million people bear Müller (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Müller have the most bearers?
We estimate about 1.2 million people bear Müller in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled miller.
How common is Müller compared with other names?
In the United States, Müller is the 6th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Müller mean?
Recorded meaning: from occupational name Müller; here contrasted with dialectal Miller
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/m%C3%BCller

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, “Müller” — the 6th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Müller parses inside a full name →