Kjetil

given name · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script

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

Kjetil is a given name, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 78th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: männl. Vom. nordischer Herkunft (zu altnord, ketül »[Opferjkessel« oder »Helm«).

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 541◐
  • GHGhana1 in 59K
  • SESweden1 in 121K

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

≈10K ●

across 6 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
114 ●

9.4K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 541 ◐

Norway

Spellings & scripts●

KjetilLatin · Norwegian Bokmål●38K records
ХьетильCyrillic · Russian●0 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●

recorded in German

männl. Vom. nordischer Herkunft (zu altnord, ketül »[Opferjkessel« oder »Helm«).

Sources 1

  • DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Kjetil is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NO Norway#7810,1068K rec.1 in 54138KKjetil114
US United States—618480 rec.——Kjetil73
GH Ghana#427291258 rec.——Kjetil6
GB United Kingdom—16485 rec.——Kjetil27
DE Germany—155105 rec.—listedKjetil31
ES Spain—112102 rec.——Kjetil16
AU Australia—9383 rec.——Kjetil23
SE Sweden—84102 rec.1 in 121K84Kjetil24
FI Finland—752 rec.—30Kjetil2
CH Switzerland—3920 rec.——Kjetil11
BR Brazil—345 rec.——Kjetil7
DK Denmark—3033 rec.1 in 196K30Kjetil30

Roughly 10K people in Norway bear this name (about 1 in 541). 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 Bokmål38K68%
  • Norwegian10K18%
  • English1.8K3%
  • German4401%
  • Danish3831%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Norwegian Bokmål37,99468%
Norwegian10,09218%
English1,8213%
German4401%
Danish3831%

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

Over time●

02004006001960198020002020424 · 1972

Show as table
Kjetil in SSB — Navn (1880–present), Norway, 1945–2022
Yearrecords
194518
194618
194713
194815
194934
195033
195132
195232
195335
195466
195589
195697
195782
195896
1959111
1960157
1961149
1962156
1963180
1964203
1965246
1966317
1967339
1968328
1969385
1970403
1971423
1972424
1973415
1974352
1975352
1976360
1977344
1978325
1979321
1980302
1981267
1982274
1983257
1984241
1985214
1986230
1987178
1988209
1989180
1990165
1991143
1992136
1993143
1994165
1995112
199687
199772
199855
199947
200031
200145
200221
200320
200415
200517
20068
200718
200810
200912
20108
20115
20136
20147
20156
20165
20197
20206
20215
20226

NO SSB — Navn (1880–present) — 75 years between 1945–2022. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1940196019802000Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, b. 1958Kjetil Rekdal, b. 1968Kjetil Knutsen, b. 1968Kjetil Undset, b. 1970Kjetil Lund, b. 1970Kjetil André Aamodt, b. 1971Kjetil-Vidar Haraldstad, b. 1973Kjetil Mørland, b. 1980Kjetil Jansrud, b. 1985Kjetil Borch, b. 1990

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 21 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Kjetil
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—38K#94
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201310K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201410K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201510K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201610K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201710K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201810K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)201910K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202110K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202010K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202210K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202310K—

Reference works 2

  • 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 · 200 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Kjetil?
We estimate roughly 10 thousand people bear Kjetil (counting its spellings and scripts) across 6 countries in our records.
In which country does Kjetil have the most bearers?
We estimate about 10 thousand people bear Kjetil in Norway, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled kjetil.
Where is Kjetil most common?
Kjetil is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 541 people carrying it.
How common is Kjetil compared with other names?
In Norway, Kjetil is the 78th most common given name of 38,312 given names recorded there.
Is Kjetil a male or female name?
Kjetil is a male 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 Kjetil mean?
Recorded meaning: männl. Vom. nordischer Herkunft (zu altnord, ketül »[Opferjkessel« oder »Helm«).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/kjetil

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, “Kjetil” — the 78th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Kjetil parses inside a full name →