First and last names in Switzerland

Last names

The commonest last name in Switzerland is Müller, followed by Meier and Schmid. Around 53 000 people are called Müller but they account for only 0.6% of Switzerland's permanent resident population (8.8m). The variety of last names is enormous. Altogether there are more than half a million different last names, including different spellings, which are counted separately.

First names

Among the first names of the entire population, the top names are those that have been popular for a long time and were given in the babyboom years (e.g. Daniel, Peter, Anna). But sociocultural values and religion also have a considerable influence on names and are reflected in these statistics (e.g. Maria).

Methodology used for first and last names

The data come from the Population and Household Statistics (STATPOP).
The first and last names of the permanent resident population were considered as on 31.12.2022.
For reasons of data protection, first and last names that occur fewer than three times throughout Switzerland are not taken into account.
Different spellings of first and last names are counted separately.
For last names made up of several names, the first word up until the hyphen is taken into account. An exception to this rule are last names with a prefix (von, de, etc.), that is an integral part of the last name.
For first names consisting of several words, the given name or very first name is taken into account. For certain foreign-language first names, this can have an influence on the meaning.
The first names are listed by year. Information on the frequency of first names at a given point in time (e.g. 1980) are calculated retrospectively using the year of birth. The data were therefore not collected in the year of birth.
As different sources are used, there may be slight differences between the results of the population's first names and those of the top babies’ names.

The information on Switzerland's first names and last names and the first names of newborns comes from the population statistics (STATPOP, BEVNAT) and is not collected separately. The first names and last names cannot be linked to each other, so data protection is guaranteed.