Sander

given name · Western Frisian · Latin script

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

Sander is a given name, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. It appears chiefly in Western Frisian and Dutch, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from a short form of Alexander, Greek 'defender of men'.

rarermore common
  • NLNetherlands1 in 3.9K◐
  • USUnited States1 in 12K
  • BEBelgium1 in 15K

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

≈49K ●

across 11 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
309 ●

139K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 518 ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

SanderLatin · Western Frisian●58K records
ซานเดอรThai · Thai●1 records

Locally spelled Zander in SE Sweden and Xander in LA Laos.

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 a short form of Alexander, Greek 'defender of men'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Sander is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—27,34374K rec.1 in 12K27KSander309
NO Norway—10,554△426 rec.1 in 51839KSander47
NL Netherlands#1834,43810K rec.1 in 3.9K27KSander110
BR Brazil—2,860△26 rec.1 in 74K2.9KSander5
DK Denmark—2,413△1 rec.1 in 2.4K2.4K—3
DE Germany—1,88936K rec.—listedSander183
SE Sweden—1,152△393 rec.1 in 8.9K1.2KZander43
BE Belgium—1,058743 rec.—134Sander66
GB United Kingdom—7823.5K rec.—25Sander79
PH Philippines—700713 rec.——Sander26
AU Australia—6342.8K rec.—66Sander106
EE Estonia#876334339 rec.—60Sander52

Roughly 27K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 12K). 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●

  • Western Frisian58K18%
  • Dutch57K18%
  • English54K17%
  • Portuguese53K17%
  • Norwegian Bokmål39K12%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Western Frisian57,76618%
Dutch57,02218%
English54,29917%
Portuguese52,77617%
Norwegian Bokmål39,34012%

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◐

Sander is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Portuguese given name86K records spelled Sander11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Peru, Netherlands, United States

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Sânder, Sánder, Sándêr, Sândêr, Sąņdęř

  • Dutch given name61K records spelled Sander2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Netherlands, Belgium, United States, Spain

    Also written Sandēr

  • Norwegian Bokmål given name59K records spelled Sander7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, United States

    Languages: Norwegian Bokmål, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Sânder

  • Estonian given name11K records spelled Sander3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, United States

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Šander

  • a separate given name6.9K records spelled Sander3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Sánder

  • Polish given name3.0K records spelled Sander2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Netherlands, Norway, United States

    Also written Şander

60 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●

Sander 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 English, A person employed to sand wood.

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

  • In Swedish, Sander är ursprungligen en tysk smekform till → Alexander. Namnet hade en viss popu laritet under 1800-talet i Sverige.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In German, Kurzform zu Alexander; die Platte zeigt die Dentale-Variation S-/Z-/X- in den Schreibungen. Belegzahlen: Sander 13776, Zander 6923, Xander 97.

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

  • In German, Patronymischer Familienname; S/Z-Varianz im Anlaut. Bearer count in NL/BE/LU: 504+10208, 137+2130, 15+0.

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

  • In German, Kurzform/Patronym zu Alexander; Typ demonstriert S/Z-Variation im Anlaut. 13776 Belege.

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

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●

020406019201940196019802000202046 · 2020

Show as table
Sander in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1912–2025
Yearrecords
19125
191510
19165
19177
191811
19197
19207
19219
19226
19237
19246
19259
19269
192714
19287
192913
193010
19318
19327
19338
193411
193513
193717
193811
19398
19409
194111
19429
194313
19446
194513
19466
194710
194814
194915
195010
19516
195212
195316
195413
19556
195610
19578
19589
195910
196115
196210
196319
196415
196513
196612
19679
196818
196913
197016
19718
19728
19746
19755
19765
19776
19788
19795
19805
198210
198311
198416
19856
198710
198814
19897
19906
19918
199211
199310
199413
199511
199613
199712
199820
199914
200016
200124
200229
200329
200424
200530
200625
200739
200833
200924
201026
201132
201222
201319
201426
201522
201630
201727
201835
201928
202046
202132
202241
202344
202426
202541

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 107 years between 1912–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

19201940196019802000Sander M. Levin, b. 1931Sandy Nelson, b. 1938Sander Vos, b. 1967Sander Boschker, b. 1970Sander Kleinenberg, b. 1971Sander Westerveld, b. 1974Sander van Doorn, b. 1979Siim-Sander Vene, b. 1990Sander Berge, b. 1998Sander Raieste, b. 1999

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 78 sources across 34 countries.

Official registers attesting Sander
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—39K#88
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—27K#96
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202511K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020109.1K#3,906
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.7K#3,726
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020208.2K#4,172
EE EstoniaStatistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed)—3.4K#30
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)20222.9K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—2.8K#4,816
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2.8K#4,021
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—2.4K#199
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20201.6K#8,171

Reference works 7

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 · 629 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Sander?
We estimate roughly 49 thousand people bear Sander (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Sander have the most bearers?
We estimate about 27 thousand people bear Sander in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled sander.
Where is Sander most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sander is densest in Norway — about 1 in 518 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is Sander compared with other names?
In the Netherlands, Sander is the 183rd most common given name of 134,847 given names recorded there.
Is Sander a male or female name?
Sander 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 Sander mean?
Recorded meaning: from a short form of Alexander, Greek 'defender of men'
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/sander

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, “Sander” — the 183rd most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Sander parses inside a full name →