Kohl

At the 2020 census, 8,836 Americans bore the surname Kohl — 3,902nd out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 33,800.

By the numbers

People: 8,836
Rank: 3,902nd
How common: 1 in 33,800
Per 100,000: 3.0

Where the name comes from

Origin German

From the German surname, from Kohl (“cabbage”). Compare Koehl, Cole, Coll, Kail, Kale.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Kohl described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 91.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.0%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 2.9%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.9%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.9%
Black, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Kohl

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017)Chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany
Herb Kohl (1935–2023)American politician
Bernhard Kohl (born 1982)road bicycle racer
Hannelore Kohl (1933–2001)Wife of German chancellor Helmut Kohl
Johann Georg Kohl (1808–1878)German geographer

People named Kohl with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Kohl

Also a first name

Kohl has been given to 1,759 American babies as a first name since 1982, peaking in 2001. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.