Jensen

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Jensen is a surname, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 13th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Danish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Son of Jens, a Scandinavian and Low German short form of Johannes.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 86◐
  • AGAntigua & Barbuda1 in 647
  • TNTunisia1 in 1.1K

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

≈413K ●

across 11 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
476 ●

1.1M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 27 ◐

Denmark

Spellings & scripts●

JensenLatin · English●1M records
젠슨Hangul · Korean●1 records

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 Jens, a Scandinavian and Low German short form of Johannes.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Jensen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark—218,886△187 rec.1 in 27219K—7
US United States#242115,679899K rec.1 in 2.9K116KJensen476
NO Norway#13163,759△6.4K rec.1 in 8664KJensen105
AU Australia#23231,73731K rec.—13Jensen192
GB United Kingdom#70130,14330K rec.—11Jensen143
CA Canada#20724,25624K rec.—20Jensen157
DE Germany#35821,87320K rec.—1Jensen168
SE Sweden#6768,569△1.9K rec.1 in 1.2K8.6KJensen88
IT Italy#4584,7314.9K rec.——Jensen30
TN Tunisia#173,1303.2K rec.——Jensen10
NZ New Zealand#1782,8622.6K rec.—10Jensen86
AG Antigua & Barbuda#132,6409.1K rec.——Jensen3

Roughly 219K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 27). 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●

  • English1M46%
  • Danish836K38%
  • Norwegian Bokmål64K3%
  • Spanish55K2%
  • 38K2%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English1,005,06646%
Danish836,24638%
Norwegian Bokmål63,7593%
Spanish54,5272%
38,4612%

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◐

Jensen is also recorded as 9 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Danish surname943K records spelled Jensen11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Norway, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Swedish

    Also written Jensén, Jénsen, Jéñśéñ, Jénsén

  • Spanish surname97K records spelled Jensen6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, France

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French

    Also written Jensén, Jéñsêñ

  • a separate surname46K records spelled Jensen3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Jensén

  • Chinese surname17K records spelled Jensen3 spellings in the group

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

    Also written Jen-Sen, Jensens

  • Polish surname7.8K records spelled Jensen10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Czechia, Slovakia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Croatian

    Also written Йенсен

  • Hindi surname7.4K records spelled Jensen6 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Jensén

  • Finnish surname5.1K records spelled Jensen4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Finland, United States, Sweden, Norway

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Jensén, Jénsén

  • a separate surname3.7K records spelled Jensen4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden, Canada

    Also written Jensén, Jėñşēņ, Jëñšėń

  • Thai surname3.5K records spelled Jensen36 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Sweden, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written เจนเซ่น, Jansson, Jenson, เยนเซ่น, เจนเซน

74 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●

Jensen 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.

  • patronymic from the personal name Jens, a reduced form of Johannes (see John). This is Denmark’s most frequent surname.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, A surname from Danish [in turn originating as a patronymic] of Danish or Norwegian origin.

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

  • In Danish, The most common surname originating as a patronymic in Denmark

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

  • In English, J. Hans Daniel, German physicist

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Johannes Vilhelm, 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●

05001K1.5K19401960198020002020

Show as table
Jensen in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1927–2025
Yearrecords
19275
19305
19545
19558
19655
19695
19726
197311
19746
197511
197620
197720
197827
197927
198029
198126
198238
198344
198439
198542
198656
198732
198853
198954
199069
199160
199269
199370
199492
1995122
1996171
1997188
1998204
1999172
2000144
2001123
2002100
2003104
2004125
2005150
2006138
2007169
2008196
2009259
2010318
2011400
2012519
2013660
2014793
2015791
2016907
20171,010
20181,196
20191,194
20201,100
20211,095
20221,105
20231,113
20241,059
20251,207

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 60 years between 1927–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Johan Jensen, b. 1859Johannes Jensen, b. 1873J. Hans D. Jensen, b. 1907Ashley Jensen, b. 1969Siv Jensen, b. 1969Anders Thomas Jensen, b. 1972Charlotte Perrelli, b. 1974Daniel Jensen, b. 1979Mathias Jensen, b. 1996Matthew Jensen, 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 69 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Jensen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—219K#2
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010116K#265
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020114K#268
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000112K#244
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—64K#9
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202521K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202010K#2,118
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—8.6K#94
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.5K#2,118
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—1.6K—
GL GreenlandStatistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1)20211.5K—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20251.2K—

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 · 470 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Jensen?
We estimate roughly 413 thousand people bear Jensen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Jensen have the most bearers?
We estimate about 219 thousand people bear Jensen in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records.
Where is Jensen most common?
Jensen is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 27 people carrying it.
How common is Jensen compared with other names?
In Antigua & Barbuda, Jensen is the 13th most common surname of 21,438 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Jensen mean?
Recorded meaning: Son of Jens, a Scandinavian and Low German short form of Johannes.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jensen

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, “Jensen” — the 13th most common surname in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Jensen parses inside a full name →