Wagner

surname · English · Latin script

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

Wagner is a surname, most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is the 8th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: 'Builder or driver of carts', from Middle High German wagen 'cart'.

rarermore common
  • LULuxembourg1 in 54◐
  • DEGermany1 in 444
  • ATAustria1 in 500

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

≈178K ●

across 13 countries

#664 ●

of 21M surnames

Sources
501 ●

1.7M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 1.4K ◐

Switzerland

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Waegner in AR Argentina and Wägner in SE Sweden.

Meaning & origin●

'Builder or driver of carts', from Middle High German wagen 'cart'.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Wagner is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#8250,379228K rec.—listedWagner270
US United States#154155,7951.3M rec.1 in 2.1K156KWagner501
GB United Kingdom#33257,21657K rec.——Wagner138
CA Canada#15929,81029K rec.——Wagner160
AU Australia#33822,49222K rec.——Wagner158
AT Austria#712,8117.9K rec.——Wagner146
IT Italy#1788,2238.7K rec.—1Wagner44
CH Switzerland#825,804△2K rec.1 in 1.4K5.8KWagner94
AR Argentina—5,412△6 rec.1 in 8.4K5.4KWaegner4
LU Luxembourg#44,972323 rec.——Wagner43
RU Russia—3,3223.5K rec.——Wagner37
PH Philippines—3,2683.4K rec.——Wagner21

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

Languages●

  • English1.4M64%
  • German367K17%
  • Spanish91K4%
  • French69K3%
  • 59K3%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,410,83264%
German367,43317%
Spanish91,4744%
French69,3503%
58,5843%

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◐

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

  • a separate surname70K records spelled Wagner4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Italy

    Also written Wägner, Wágner

  • Polish surname42K records spelled Wagner27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Czechia, United States, Croatia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Wágner, Вагнер, Vagner, Wägner, Wağner

  • Danish surname15K records spelled Wagner12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Norway, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Waagner, Wágner, Wågner

  • Arabic surname8.8K records spelled Wagner3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, Palestine, Saudi Arabia

    Languages: Arabic, Maltese

    Also written Wágner

  • Hindi surname7.2K records spelled Wagner4 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Wágner, Wägner

90 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●

Wagner 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.

  • Someone who produces or drives wagons, in Baden 1809.

    as a nameThe Origin of Jewish Family Names: Morphology and History

  • In German, Occupational surname: wagon-maker/cartwright.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 5: Familiennamen nach Beruf und persönlichen Merkmalen

  • In German, cartwright, wainwright, wheelwright

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

  • In German, Berufsname zu mhd. wagner 'Wagenmacher'; die Karte zeigt Tonvokal-Varianten mit a/e-Wechsel in Wagner-Formen.

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

  • In German, Berufsname zum Wagner 'Wagen- und Karrenbauer' (Wag(e)ner-Variante); 2 Typen/83582 Tokens.

    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.

Over time●

050100150200192019401960198020002020184 · 1997

Show as table
Wagner in INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024), Ecuador, 1913–2024
Yearrecords
19131
19321
19331
19344
19351
19365
19372
19381
19392
19404
19412
19423
19432
19443
19454
19463
19471
19484
19495
195011
19512
19526
195311
195410
195517
19569
195711
195812
195914
196012
196116
196217
196323
196418
196519
196622
196725
196822
196922
197030
197143
197244
197338
197446
197543
197644
197739
197830
197940
198054
198147
198259
198355
198466
198572
198651
198743
198854
198949
199050
199161
199256
199390
199478
199579
1996175
1997184
1998163
1999132
2000134
2001107
200273
200368
200468
200553
200674
200763
200885
200967
201059
201145
201241
201340
201432
201527
201622
201729
201816
201915
202011
202121
202215
202313
20248

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 94 years between 1913–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Richard Wagner, b. 1813Adolph Wagner, b. 1835Cosima Wagner, b. 1837Robert F. Wagner, b. 1877Robert Wagner, b. 1930Natalie Wood, b. 1938Priscilla Presley, b. 1945Lindsay Wagner, b. 1949Natasha Gregson Wagner, b. 1970Jack Wagner, 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 71 sources across 35 countries.

Official registers attesting Wagner
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010156K#173
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000155K#152
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020149K#181
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—125K#393
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)2022123K—
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—123K#264
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20245.8K#83
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—5.4K—
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names20243.5K#343
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262.9K—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—2.9K#818
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)20262.6K—

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 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)
  • 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 · 479 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Wagner?
We estimate roughly 178 thousand people bear Wagner (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Wagner have the most bearers?
Wagner is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled wagner.
How common is Wagner compared with other names?
In Germany, Wagner is the 8th most common surname of 734,811 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Wagner mean?
Recorded meaning: 'Builder or driver of carts', from Middle High German wagen 'cart'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/wagner

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, “Wagner” — the 8th most common surname in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Wagner parses inside a full name →