Names of Switzerland CH

BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) records Müller as the commonest surname in Switzerland; the names that most distinguish Switzerland from the rest of the world are Urs, Beat and Peter.

Written in German, French, Italian, Romansh.

Population
8.4M
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
87K
ABuilt from 2 official registers (2024), 87,142 name forms in our corpus, 21 cited works.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Switzerland are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Switzerland included.

How names work in Switzerland

6 naming traditions are in use in Switzerland, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Switzerland

Counts more than one population · authority tier 1
FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung, 2024 — 202 given names counted over a mixed population, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Emma377—
2Mia367—
3Sofia321—
4Emilia271—
5Lina255—
6Elena253—
7Mila252—
8Olivia245—
9Nora241—
10Lia223—
11Luna207—
12Lea203—
13Elina199—
14Alina197—
15Malea194—
16Amelia189—
17Nina186—
18Sophia185—
19Anna183—
20Aurora181—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung's top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung 2024Across all recordsnoah: 1 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country1. noahnot rankedliam: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. liamnot rankedmatteo: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. matteonot rankedgabriel: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. gabrielnot rankedluca: 5 → 115 · ranks lower across all records5. luca115leo: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. leonot rankedlouis: 7 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country7. louisnot rankedelio: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. elionot rankedleon: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. leonnot rankedleano: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. leanonot rankedelias: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. eliasnot rankedlevi: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. levinot rankedlio: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. lionot rankedaaron: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. aaronnot rankedelia: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. elianot rankedtheo: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. theonot rankedleonardo: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. leonardonot rankedluan: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. luannot rankednino: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. ninonot rankednoé: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. noénot rankedmalik: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. maliknot rankedenea: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. eneanot rankeddavid: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. davidnot rankedlivio: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. livionot rankednico: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. niconot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung, 2024 on the left; every record we hold for Switzerland on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Switzerland

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Switzerland holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

UrsGrafBeatPeterJurgMarkusGenevaRothMarcelRolfAndreasScharChristophStefanChristianPascalRolandMatthiasKurtThomasMartinPhilippWernerBrunoAebiRudolfChurHanspeterJosefLukasMarcoPatrickUrsulaReneMargritFranzSusanneWalterErnstDominikMichelFranziskaBernhardClaudiaVerenaFlorianUlrichErichLucaRosmarieTobiasPierreRaphaelOlivierAlainMarcYves
Sized by how much of the difference between Switzerland's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

MiaEmmaSofiaEmiliaLina20192024467
FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung, 2019–2024 (6 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Mullersurname●
Schmidsurname●
Meiersurname●
Stefangiven name●
Kellersurname●
The best-attested names in Switzerland, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)2024headline (surnames)

    Federal Statistical Office (BFS). Counts: residents. surname. 207,050 forms. 2024. Licence: OPEN BY DEFAULT (Swiss federal open data).

    What we know about this register

    Surnames of the resident population by canton, 2024 vintage. From BFS DAM API (asset 36062362; served as UTF-8 CSV despite the /master endpoint). Columns TIME_PERIOD, LASTNAME, GDEKT (canton), RANG_KT (rank within canton), VALUE (count). No national aggregate row in source — national totals computed by summing across 26 cantons (Müller=52889, rank 1). Normalized parquet keeps both national rows (region_code=null) and canton rows (region_code=canton abbr). Asset IDs change between BFS releases.

    Last verified 2026-06-27.

  • FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung2024headline (given)

    Federal Statistical Office (FSO / BFS / OFS). Counts: mixed. given. 205 forms. 2019–2024. Licence: OPEN BY DEFAULT (Swiss federal open data).

    What we know about this register

    Top baby names by canton and language region 2019-2024. Combined M+F XLSX from BFS DAM API (asset 36054130). Wide pivot format: Vornamen × (Rang, Anzahl) per year.

    Last verified 2026-05-09.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Switzerland?
Noah, according to FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung (2024), with 511 bearers recorded among boys.
What is the most common surname in Switzerland?
Müller, according to BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) (2024), with 52,889 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Switzerland?
Because they count different people. FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Noah. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Stefan. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Switzerland?
No — 6 are described on this page (German, Romansh, Luxembourgish, Italian, Maltese, Sardinian and Corsican), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Switzerland”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/CH (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); FSO — Vornamen der Neugeborenen und Wohnbevölkerung.