We all know Mennos like to have large families, but some of us are considerably more prolific in this department than others. So, what are the most common Dutch/Prussian/ “Low German” Mennonite surnames? Let’s have a look. (A list of most common Swiss Mennonites surnames can be found here).
I know some of you are going to object to my methodology. I admit it’s not scientific, but then again neither is the Mennonite game. I made this list after literally counting every single Mennonite surname in the Steinbach phonebook. It took me a long time, so please cut me some slack about my methods, okay? If someone’s willing to tally up the list from Winkler or wherever, I’ll be more than happy to adjust the results.
Anyway, here are the 50 most common Mennonite surnames, according to their frequency in the Steinbach phonebook or, in other words, a list of Mennos who still have a landline. Oba.
Rank. Surname – Number of families
- Friesen – 254
- Penner – 242
- Reimer – 217
- Dyck/Dick/Dueck – 151
- Wiebe – 146
- Klassen – 104
- Peters – 93
- Giesbrecht – 92
- Hiebert – 92
- Plett – 90
- Doerksen/Derksen/Duerksen – 86
- Funk – 81
- Kehler – 76
- Toews – 76
- Neufeld – 73
- Thiessen – 69
- Barkman – 67
- Loewen – 66
- Rempel – 63
- Martens – 61
- Harder – 50
- Kroeker – 46
- Unger – 41
- Hildebrand(t) – 40
- Enns -38
- Sawatzky – 37
- Fast – 36
- Schroeder – 36
- Braun/Brown – 35
- Froese – 34
- Fehr – 32
- Kornelsen – 31
- Guenther/Ginter – 30
- Koop – 30
- Bergen – 29
- Janzen – 28
- Goertzen – 27
- Unrau/Unruh – 27
- Wiens – 27
- Brandt – 26
- Warkentin – 26
- Broesky – 22
- Falk – 23
- Esau – 20
- Go(o)ssen – 18
- Nickel/Nikkel – 18
- Schellenberg – 18
- Wall – 18
- Bartel – 17
- Isaac -17
Other names that appeared multiple times: Banman, Berg, Bergman(n), Blatz, Block, Bueckert, Buhler, Driedger, Elias, Engbrecht, Epp, Fuchs, Groening, Hamm, Heinrichs, Heppner/Hoeppner, Gerbandt, Janz, Klippenstein, Kliewer, Krahn, Lepp, Loeppky, Miller, Pankratz, Petkau, Poetker, Quiring, Redikop, Schmidt, Schulz/Schultz, Siemens, Schneider/Snider, Stoesz, Suderman, Teichroeb, Vogt, Voth, Wohlegemuth.
Just for the sake of comparison, the most common non-Mennonite surname, with 20 entries, was Waldner, which, around here anyway, is usually of Hutterite origin. The most common Englisher surname is Smith with 13 entries in the phonebook.
According to my calculations, the name Peter Friesen is the most common name in Steinbach, with 14 appearances in the Steinbach phonebook.
