Andersen
surname · Danish · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Andersen is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 12th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Danish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: ‘son of Anders’, Danish and Norwegian form of Andreas.
- DKDenmark1 in 41◐
- SESweden1 in 48
- NONorway1 in 53
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈1.3M ●
- #139 ●
- 6 ●
- Sources
- 587 ●
- 1 in 41 ◐
across 11 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
8.1M records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Anderson in US United States, GB United Kingdom, AU Australia and 15 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
‘son of Anders’, Danish and Norwegian form of Andreas
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #12 | 784,404 | 6.8M rec. | 1 in 424 | 784K | Anderson | 587 |
| GB United Kingdom | #19 | 392,551 | 353K rec. | — | listed | Anderson | 288 |
| SE Sweden | #142 | 211,085△ | 7.4K rec. | 1 in 48 | 211K | Andersen | 109 |
| AU Australia | #12 | 188,761 | 180K rec. | — | 1 | Anderson | 285 |
| CA Canada | #9 | 167,410 | 162K rec. | — | 4 | Anderson | 251 |
| DK Denmark | #4 | 143,880△ | 39K rec. | 1 in 41 | 144K | Andersen | 231 |
| NO Norway | #6 | 103,146△ | 15K rec. | 1 in 53 | 103K | Andersen | 123 |
| IT Italy | #14 | 35,390 | 36K rec. | — | 1 | Anderson | 94 |
| DE Germany | #290 | 24,605 | 25K rec. | — | — | Anderson | 155 |
| NZ New Zealand | #9 | 17,171 | 15K rec. | — | — | Anderson | 151 |
| RU Russia | — | 16,702 | 17K rec. | — | — | Anderson | 87 |
| SG Singapore | #26 | 14,326 | 15K rec. | — | — | Anderson | 76 |
Roughly 784K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 424). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Danish516K49%
- English283K27%
- Norwegian Bokmål103K10%
- Norwegian42K4%
- Spanish23K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Danish | 515,854 | 49% |
| English | 283,461 | 27% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 103,147 | 10% |
| Norwegian | 42,150 | 4% |
| Spanish | 22,728 | 2% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Andersen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, patronymic from the given name Anders < Andreas
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Danish, Danish patronymic, from Anders < Andreas
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, A surname from Danish [in turn originating as a patronymic] of Danish and Norwegian origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Hans Christian, Danish author
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1988 | 5 |
| 1991 | 7 |
| 1992 | 11 |
| 1993 | 8 |
| 1994 | 6 |
| 1995 | 6 |
| 1996 | 12 |
| 1997 | 20 |
| 1998 | 16 |
| 1999 | 8 |
| 2000 | 16 |
| 2001 | 10 |
| 2002 | 11 |
| 2003 | 21 |
| 2004 | 17 |
| 2005 | 27 |
| 2006 | 35 |
| 2007 | 49 |
| 2008 | 43 |
| 2009 | 49 |
| 2010 | 39 |
| 2011 | 39 |
| 2012 | 38 |
| 2013 | 42 |
| 2014 | 39 |
| 2015 | 50 |
| 2016 | 49 |
| 2017 | 46 |
| 2018 | 44 |
| 2019 | 35 |
| 2020 | 30 |
| 2021 | 26 |
| 2022 | 29 |
| 2023 | 20 |
| 2024 | 23 |
| 2025 | 27 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 36 years between 1988–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Hans Christian Andersenb. 1805DKDanish writer and poet (1805–1875)
- Martin Andersen Nexøb. 1869DKDanish writer (1869–1954)
- Lale Andersenb. 1905DEGerman singer and actress (1905–1972)
- Elga Andersenb. 1935DEGerman actress and singer (1935–1994)
- Eric Andersenb. 1943USAmerican musician
- Jørn Andersenb. 1963NONorwegian-born German football player and manager
- Kristian Eidnes Andersenb. 1966DKDanish composer and sound designer
- Anja Andersenb. 1969DKDanish handball player
- David Andersenb. 1980AUAustralian basketball player (born 1980)
- Stephan Andersenb. 1981DKDanish footballer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 48 sources across 25 countries.
Reference works 4
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 195 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Andersen?
- We estimate roughly 1.3 million people bear Andersen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Andersen have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 784 thousand people bear Andersen in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled anderson.
- Where is Andersen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Andersen is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 41 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Andersen compared with other names?
- In the United States, Andersen is the 12th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Andersen mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘son of Anders’, Danish and Norwegian form of Andreas
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/andersenThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Andersen” — the 12th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.