Bente
given name · Danish · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Bente is a given name, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 65th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Danish and Norwegian Bokmål, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Bente är en dansk och norsk femininform till Bent (→ Bengt).
- DKDenmark1 in 287◐
- NONorway1 in 350
- USUnited States1 in 921K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈43K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 113 ●
- 1 in 287 ◐
across 9 countries
recorded for this name
14K records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
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●
Bente är en dansk och norsk femininform till Bent (→ Bengt).
Sources 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 14 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | #65 | 20,469△ | 3.7K rec. | 1 in 287 | 20K | Bente | 113 |
| NO Norway | #54 | 15,640△ | 7K rec. | 1 in 350 | 52K | Bente | 84 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 6,170△ | 447 rec. | 1 in 2.8K | 6.2K | Bente | 34 |
| SE Sweden | — | 702△ | 313 rec. | 1 in 15K | 702 | Bente | 24 |
| US United States | — | 361 | 1.5K rec. | 1 in 921K | 377 | Bente | 104 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 243 | 178 rec. | — | — | Bente | 35 |
| PH Philippines | — | 76 | 166 rec. | — | — | Bente | 10 |
| BR Brazil | — | 71 | 36 rec. | — | 308 | Bente | 18 |
| CA Canada | — | 69 | 68 rec. | — | — | Bente | 23 |
| TR Türkiye | — | 59 | 76 rec. | — | — | Bente | 7 |
| GH Ghana | — | 46 | 53 rec. | — | — | Bente | 7 |
| ES Spain | — | 42 | 70 rec. | 1 in 1.2M | 42 | Bente | 16 |
Roughly 20K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 287). 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●
- Danish85K46%
- Norwegian Bokmål52K28%
- Western Frisian11K6%
- English10K6%
- Norwegian10K6%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Danish | 85,224 | 46% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 52,208 | 28% |
| Western Frisian | 11,356 | 6% |
| English | 10,410 | 6% |
| Norwegian | 10,365 | 6% |
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●
Bente is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In wlo, burst open (like popcorn)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In nup, loincloth
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 |
|---|---|
| 1945 | 91 |
| 1946 | 152 |
| 1947 | 132 |
| 1948 | 173 |
| 1949 | 213 |
| 1950 | 259 |
| 1951 | 330 |
| 1952 | 445 |
| 1953 | 543 |
| 1954 | 631 |
| 1955 | 805 |
| 1956 | 811 |
| 1957 | 749 |
| 1958 | 772 |
| 1959 | 712 |
| 1960 | 714 |
| 1961 | 651 |
| 1962 | 635 |
| 1963 | 562 |
| 1964 | 632 |
| 1965 | 645 |
| 1966 | 622 |
| 1967 | 630 |
| 1968 | 626 |
| 1969 | 490 |
| 1970 | 449 |
| 1971 | 436 |
| 1972 | 412 |
| 1973 | 304 |
| 1974 | 272 |
| 1975 | 254 |
| 1976 | 180 |
| 1977 | 181 |
| 1978 | 149 |
| 1979 | 153 |
| 1980 | 124 |
| 1981 | 134 |
| 1982 | 111 |
| 1983 | 110 |
| 1984 | 96 |
| 1985 | 72 |
| 1986 | 64 |
| 1987 | 64 |
| 1988 | 56 |
| 1989 | 43 |
| 1990 | 34 |
| 1991 | 30 |
| 1992 | 21 |
| 1993 | 27 |
| 1994 | 29 |
| 1995 | 26 |
| 1996 | 9 |
| 1997 | 16 |
| 1998 | 13 |
| 1999 | 11 |
| 2001 | 8 |
| 2002 | 7 |
| 2003 | 4 |
| 2006 | 4 |
| 2007 | 4 |
| 2011 | 4 |
NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 61 years between 1945–2011. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Bente Børsumb. 1934NONorwegian actress (born 1934)
- Bente Hansenb. 1940DKDanish politician
- Bente Scaveniusb. 1944SEDanish art historian, author
- Bente Erichsenb. 1949NONorwegian film director
- Bente Kahanb. 1958NONorwegian musician
- Bente Thorsenb. 1958NONorwegian politician
- Bente Skarib. 1972NONorwegian cross-country skier
- Bente Nordbyb. 1974NONorwegian footballer
- Bente Paulisb. 1997NLDutch rower
- Bente Fokkensb. 2000NLDutch actress
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 47 sources across 23 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 · 287 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Bente?
- We estimate roughly 43 thousand people bear Bente (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Bente have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 20 thousand people bear Bente in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled bente.
- Where is Bente most common?
- Bente is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 287 people carrying it.
- How common is Bente compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Bente is the 65th most common given name of 31,396 given names recorded there.
- Is Bente a male or female name?
- Bente is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Bente mean?
- Recorded meaning: Bente är en dansk och norsk femininform till Bent (→ Bengt).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/benteThe 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, “Bente” — the 65th most common given name in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.