The Friess Family Name

Friess is a branch of the Fries name tree. In origin, the name means “One who came from Frisia, in northern Germany”.

• 1,157 Americans were listed as Friess in the 2010 census. French birth records list 1,436 children named Friess between 1891 and 2000. There were 73 such births in the 1890s and 118 in the 1990s.
• Local scribes, dialects and emigration all left their mark on how the name was written.
• The extra ending in Friess is patronymic: it identified a person as belonging to Fries's family.
• Other spellings include Friese and Friesen.

Friess coat of arms

Arms linked to Fries and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to. Get the complete Friess report, with a museum-style coat of arms.