Johansen
surname · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Johansen is a surname, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and Danish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Johann (Scandinavian), Johann (German), vernacular forms of Johannes (see John).
- NONorway1 in 40◐
- DKDenmark1 in 203
- SESweden1 in 4.6K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈180K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 271 ●
- 1 in 40 ◐
across 12 countries
recorded for this name
64K records
Official registry-verified
Norway
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●
patronymic from the personal name Johann (Scandinavian), Johann (German), vernacular forms of Johannes (see John).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | #2 | 136,812△ | 17K rec. | 1 in 40 | 137K | Johansen | 144 |
| DK Denmark | #19 | 28,983△ | 7.8K rec. | 1 in 203 | 29K | Johansen | 180 |
| US United States | — | 9,815 | 30K rec. | 1 in 34K | 9.8K | Johansen | 271 |
| SE Sweden | #374 | 2,225 | 1.4K rec. | 1 in 4.6K | 2.2K | Johansen | 54 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,785 | 816 rec. | — | — | Johansen | 59 |
| CA Canada | — | 733 | 705 rec. | — | 2 | Johansen | 50 |
| GL Greenland | #15 | 642△ | 9 rec. | 1 in 90 | 642 | Johansen | 11 |
| FI Finland | — | 436△ | 36 rec. | 1 in 13K | 436 | Johansen | 15 |
| AR Argentina | — | 416 | 2.2K rec. | 1 in 109K | 416 | Johansen | 47 |
| MX Mexico | — | 412 | 394 rec. | — | — | Johansen | 36 |
| BR Brazil | — | 362 | 421 rec. | 1 in 585K | 362 | Johansen | 41 |
| CL Chile | — | 355 | 104 rec. | — | 1 | Johansen | 19 |
Roughly 137K people in Norway bear this name (about 1 in 40). 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●
- Norwegian Bokmål137K34%
- Danish101K25%
- English75K19%
- Norwegian44K11%
- Spanish7.8K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norwegian Bokmål | 136,813 | 34% |
| Danish | 100,957 | 25% |
| English | 74,737 | 19% |
| Norwegian | 44,235 | 11% |
| Spanish | 7,850 | 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●
Johansen 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 English, A surname from the North Germanic languages, Norwegian, or Danish.
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)
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 |
|---|---|
| 2011 | 671 |
| 2012 | 670 |
| 2013 | 651 |
| 2014 | 638 |
| 2015 | 644 |
| 2016 | 639 |
| 2017 | 642 |
| 2018 | 630 |
| 2019 | 625 |
| 2020 | 630 |
| 2021 | 642 |
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●
- Viggo Johansenb. 1851DKDanish painter (1851-1935)
- Fredrik Hjalmar Johansenb. 1867NONorwegian explorer
- Iris Johansenb. 1938USAmerican novelist
- Hanna Johansenb. 1939DESwiss writer and translator (1939–2023)
- Lars-Emil Johansenb. 1946GLPrime Minister of Greenland
- David Johansenb. 1950USAmerican singer (1950–2025)
- Lene Moyell Johansenb. 1968DKpolitician, High commissioner in the Faroe Islands
- Anders Behring Breivikb. 1979NOnot in their usual nameNorwegian neo-Nazi terrorist and mass murderer
- Stefan Johansenb. 1991NONorwegian association football player (born 1991)
- Julius Johansenb. 1999DKDanish cyclist, born 1999
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 44 sources across 27 countries.
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 · 95 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Johansen?
- We estimate roughly 180 thousand people bear Johansen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Johansen have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 137 thousand people bear Johansen in Norway, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled johansen.
- Where is Johansen most common?
- Johansen is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 40 people carrying it.
- How common is Johansen compared with other names?
- In Norway, Johansen is the 2nd most common surname of 115,521 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Johansen mean?
- Recorded meaning: patronymic from the personal name Johann (Scandinavian), Johann (German), vernacular forms of Johannes (see John).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/johansenThe 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, “Johansen” — the 2nd most common surname in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.