Krause is usually a German descriptive surname for a person with curly or crinkled hair. More precisely, it belongs to the group of surnames built from Middle High German and Middle Low German krūs, meaning “curly” or “curled.” That is the leading explanation, but it is not the only possible origin: in individual cases the same spelling may have referred to a maker of jugs, or to someone from a place called Krausen.
These origins describe how a surname could form; they do not identify one founding Krause family. The name could be coined independently for different people, and the spelling alone cannot establish that two bearers share an ancestor.
The Main Meaning: Curly Hair
The Deutscher Familiennamenatlas classifies Krause with Kraus and Krauser as adjectival nicknames. Its source word, krūs, is recorded in both Middle High German and Middle Low German with the sense “curly” or “curled,” and the atlas specifically connects the surname to hair form. In plain English, the original byname probably meant “the curly-haired person,” rather than “a curl” as an abstract object.
The final -e is also meaningful. German descriptive bynames could preserve different grammatical forms of an adjective. The atlas explains the weak form through phrases comparable to der krause Hans (“curly-haired Hans”) or Hans der Krause (“Hans the curly-haired one”). Kraus is the corresponding form without the final -e, especially associated with loss of that ending in southern German speech. The ending therefore does not make Krause a feminine surname and is not, by itself, evidence of a separate family origin.
Like other surnames based on an ordinary physical description, Krause need not have arisen only once. A nickname could become hereditary long after its literal description stopped applying to every descendant.
Less Common Alternative Origins
Two different words and one place-name complicate the simple “curly hair” answer.
First, the Deutscher Familiennamenatlas allows an occasional occupational origin from Middle High German krūse and Middle Low German krōs or krūs, meaning a jug or earthenware drinking vessel. On this interpretation, the surname was an indirect occupational name for a potter. The Dictionary of American Family Names similarly gives a maker or seller of jugs as a German explanation for Krause. This vessel word resembles the adjective behind the hair nickname, so a modern spelling cannot reliably distinguish the two.
Second, the atlas notes that an origin from a settlement name such as Krausen in the Rhineland is possible in individual cases. That would make the surname locational: it would identify a person by the place from which they came. The atlas treats this as an exception, not as the general origin of the surname.
The Dictionary of American Family Names also labels Krause as German and Jewish (Ashkenazic), describing it as a variant of Kraus. That classification records the surname's use in more than one historical community; it does not mean that every Krause line is Ashkenazic, nor that German Christian and Jewish bearers belong to a single lineage. Family records are needed to establish the history of a particular branch.
Krause, Kraus, and Other Spellings
The closest linguistic forms documented together by the Deutscher Familiennamenatlas are:
- Krause and Kraus, the weak and endingless forms of the descriptive name;
- Krauße, Krauß, Krausse, and Krauss, forms reflecting different ways of writing the final sibilant;
- Crause and Crauss, uncommon spellings with initial C;
- Kruse, a form associated with a different development of the stem vowel and especially with Low German usage;
- Krauser, a less common form with an -er ending.
These are historically and linguistically related name forms, but they are not freely interchangeable in genealogy. Kruse, for example, can independently carry both the curly-haired nickname and the jug-related occupational meaning. In North America, Crouse may be an Americanized form of Kraus, but it also has other stated sources, including English Cruse and Dutch Kroese. A Crouse record should therefore be linked to Krause or Kraus only when documents show the same person or family using both forms.
Broad lists sometimes add Krauze or Krausz simply because they look similar. Similar spelling is not enough to treat them as Krause variants in a particular family; language, locality, and a documented sequence of records matter more.
What Distribution Evidence Can—and Cannot—Show
Krause is not confined to one small German region. Using a 2005 German telephone-directory dataset, the Deutscher Familiennamenatlas counted 38,883 Krause entries and placed the name 28th among surnames in Germany. The figure counts telephone listings rather than individual people, but it demonstrates that Krause was both frequent and broadly established. The atlas grouped 53,859 listings in the wider Krause type when forms such as Kruse, Krauße, and Crause were included.
The surname is also well established in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 surname file records 34,722 people named Krause, ranking it 1,009th. That modern count confirms presence, not a particular migration story: it cannot show when a family arrived, from which German-speaking locality it came, or which of the surname's possible meanings applies.
For an individual line, the most useful evidence is a record sequence connecting the same people across places and spellings. A change from Krause to Kraus, Krauss, or Crouse can be significant when supported by matching relatives, dates, residences, occupations, or original-language records. Without that continuity, a shared spelling—or a shared dictionary meaning—is not evidence of shared descent.
References
- Fabian Fahlbusch, Rita Heuser, Jessica Nowak, and Mirjam Schmuck, *Deutscher Familiennamenatlas*, vol. 3, *Morphologie der Familiennamen* (edited by Konrad Kunze and Damaris Nübling; De Gruyter, 2012), especially pp. 4–7
- Patrick Hanks, Simon Lenarčič, and Peter McClure, eds., *Dictionary of American Family Names*, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022), entry for “Krause”
- Patrick Hanks, Simon Lenarčič, and Peter McClure, eds., *Dictionary of American Family Names*, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022), entry for “Kraus”
- Patrick Hanks, Simon Lenarčič, and Peter McClure, eds., *Dictionary of American Family Names*, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022), entry for “Kruse”
- Patrick Hanks, Simon Lenarčič, and Peter McClure, eds., *Dictionary of American Family Names*, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022), entry for “Crouse”
- U.S. Census Bureau, “Frequently Occurring Surnames from the 2010 Census” (data and methodology page, revised 2021)