Christensen

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Christensen is a surname, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Danish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: ‘Son of Christen’, a Scandinavian and North German male personal name meaning literally ‘Christian’.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 55
  • TCTurks & Caicos Islands1 in 220
  • NONorway1 in 448

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈200K

across 13 countries

Sources
450

763K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 55

Denmark

Meaning & origin

‘Son of Christen’, a Scandinavian and North German male personal name meaning literally ‘Christian’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Christensen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark#6106,86028K rec.1 in 55107KChristensen226
US United States#37275,143626K rec.1 in 4.4K75KChristensen450
AU Australia#38520,08019K rec.Christensen147
GB United Kingdom19,48218K rec.Christensen104
CA Canada#33216,69416K rec.Christensen143
NO Norway#5112,2103.3K rec.1 in 44812KChristensen97
SE Sweden#2753,2532.3K rec.1 in 3.1K3.3KChristensen85
IT Italy#8023,1833.2K rec.Christensen22
IL Israel1,9052.1K rec.Christensen9
NZ New Zealand#2821,8971.5K rec.Christensen78
AG Antigua & Barbuda#161,7225.7K rec.Christensen2
TC Turks & Caicos Islands#11,5935.4K rec.Christensen2

Roughly 107K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 55). 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

  • English624K51%
  • Danish425K35%
  • Norwegian30K2%
  • Spanish29K2%
  • 25K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English623,97951%
Danish425,38635%
Norwegian30,3832%
Spanish28,9232%
24,5042%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way

Christensen is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname36K records spelled Christensen4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico

    Languages: Spanish, Italian

    Also written Chrištêñsëñ

  • a separate surname29K records spelled Christensen2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway

    Also written Chŕistensen

68 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

Christensen 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 Danish, a common surname originating as a patronymic

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, Patronymischer Familienname zu Christian; zeigt norddeutsche -sen-Schreibung im Konsonantismus. Variantenschwerpunkt der Karte: Christiansen/Christensen/Carstensen.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, Patronym zu Christian; Nebenkarte, mit Varianten im Anlaut und Stammkonsonanten; 810 Belege gesamt.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus

  • In German, Patronymischer Familienname auf -sen. In Dänemark sehr häufig; Bildung aus Christen/Christian.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen

  • In Norwegian, a surname originating as a patronymic

    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

010020030040020152020328 · 2014

Show as table
Christensen in Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1), Greenland, 2011–2021
Yearrecords
2011323
2012321
2013324
2014328
2015328
2016320
2017317
2018313
2019306
2020304
2021318

GL Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1)11 years between 2011–2021. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name

1940196019802000Jesper Allan Christensen, b. 1948Pernille Bech Christensen, b. 1959Helena Christensen, b. 1968Peter Gade, b. 1976Charlotte Bruus Christensen, b. 1978Hayden Christensen, b. 1981Erika Christensen, b. 1982Andreas Christensen, b. 1996Oliver Christensen, b. 1999Shawn Christensen, b. 2000

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 40 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Christensen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)107K#6
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201075K#433
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202075K#435
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200071K#412
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)12K#57
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20186.3K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20196.2K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20206.2K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20216.2K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20226.2K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20236.1K
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20246.1K

Reference works 5

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • 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 · 99 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Christensen?
We estimate roughly 200 thousand people bear Christensen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
In which country does Christensen have the most bearers?
We estimate about 107 thousand people bear Christensen in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled christensen.
Where is Christensen most common?
Christensen is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 55 people carrying it.
How common is Christensen compared with other names?
In Denmark, Christensen is the 6th most common surname of 100,227 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Christensen mean?
Recorded meaning: ‘Son of Christen’, a Scandinavian and North German male personal name meaning literally ‘Christian’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/christensen

The 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

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

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, “Christensen” — the 6th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Christensen parses inside a full name →