Lars

given name · Danish · Latin script

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

Lars is a given name, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Danish and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A male given name from Latin occasionally given to Anglophones.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 45◐
  • DKDenmark1 in 138
  • NONorway1 in 189

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

≈323K ●

across 10 countries

3 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
250 ●

167K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 45 ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

LarsLatin · Danish●256K records
ЛарсCyrillic · Tajik●0 records
ΛαρςGreek · Greek●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●

A male given name from Latin occasionally given to Anglophones.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Lars is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#9224,538△33K rec.1 in 45225KLars179
DK Denmark#742,59622K rec.1 in 13843KLars227
NO Norway#728,94319K rec.1 in 18979KLars131
NL Netherlands#30913,87611K rec.1 in 1.2K21KLars113
US United States—7,09557K rec.1 in 47K7.1KLars250
GB United Kingdom—5,2583.8K rec.—3Lars95
FI Finland#3955,052△566 rec.1 in 1.1K11KLars48
AU Australia—3,9313.5K rec.—3Lars115
CA Canada—2,1891.9K rec.—2Lars67
CH Switzerland#3381,9101.2K rec.—73Lars56
TN Tunisia#2881,1351.2K rec.——Lars3
BE Belgium—9661.5K rec.—2Lars62

Roughly 225K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 45). 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●

  • Danish256K29%
  • German194K22%
  • Norwegian Bokmål79K9%
  • English77K9%
  • Swedish64K7%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Danish255,71529%
German193,90022%
Norwegian Bokmål78,6809%
English77,1299%
Swedish63,7257%

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◐

Lars is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • German given name257K records spelled Lars12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Netherlands, United States, Poland

    Languages: German, Western Frisian

    Also written Laers, Larš, Lárs, Lärs, Lårs

  • a separate given name9.1K records spelled Lars3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden, Canada

    Also written Lârs, Lârš

  • Polish given name7.1K records spelled Lars20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, Sweden, Norway, Czechia

    Languages: Polish, Russian, Czech

    Also written Ларс, Лярс, Liars

  • Hebrew given name205 records spelled Lars3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Sweden, Israel, Netherlands

    Also written לארס, Lares

49 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●

Lars 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 German, männl. Vom., schwedische, dänische und norwegische Form von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In French, forme scandinave de Laurent, du latin Laurentius. Fête: 10 août, saint Laurent.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • Scandinavian form of LAURENCE . This was the second commonest male name in Denmark in 1965 and the third commonest in Sweden in 1973.

    as a word

  • In Welsh, alternative form of larts (“larch trees”)

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

  • In Latvian, Naudas vienība Gruzijā

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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●

050100150190019502000128 · 2000

Show as table
Lars in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1883–2025
Yearrecords
18837
18845
18865
18875
18975
19018
19126
19136
191416
191517
191610
191724
191812
19198
192014
192121
192210
192317
19249
192511
192614
192714
192815
192914
193013
193112
193210
193314
193412
193515
193616
193727
193815
193919
194022
194115
194225
194318
194421
194520
194616
194715
194834
194929
195034
195129
195240
195336
195444
195541
195654
195754
195874
195994
196061
1961110
196295
196379
196490
196582
196682
196796
196888
196993
1970104
197189
197287
197376
197479
197575
197679
197768
197864
1979105
198099
198177
198282
1983100
198481
198569
198675
198768
198884
198980
199084
199174
199288
199388
199489
199591
199697
199795
1998109
1999103
2000128
2001114
2002127
2003117
2004111
2005116
2006101
2007125
2008102
200995
201089
201174
201284
201395
201483
201591
2016109
201788
201887
201969
202083
202159
202295
202367
202467
202583

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 120 years between 1883–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

190019502000Lars Onsager, b. 1903Lars Peter Hansen, b. 1952Lars von Trier, b. 1956Lars Ulrich, b. 1963Yngwie Malmsteen, b. 1963Lars Løkke Rasmussen, b. 1964Lars Eidinger, b. 1976Nick Heidfeld, b. 1977Lars Klingbeil, b. 1978Lars Bender, b. 1989

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 83 sources across 38 countries.

Official registers attesting Lars
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—225K#4
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)202083K—
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—79K#8
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—43K#3
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)202529K—
NL NetherlandsMeertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017)—21K#148
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—11K#383
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20207.1K#3,091
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—5.1K—
AT AustriaStatistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024)2024503#326
GL GreenlandStatistics Greenland — First names (NAXT5)2021492—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20)2026461#724

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • 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 · 680 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lars?
We estimate roughly 323 thousand people bear Lars (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
In which country does Lars have the most bearers?
We estimate about 225 thousand people bear Lars in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled lars.
Where is Lars most common?
Lars is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 45 people carrying it.
How common is Lars compared with other names?
In Sweden, Lars is the 9th most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
Is Lars a male or female name?
Lars 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 Lars mean?
Recorded meaning: A male given name from Latin occasionally given to Anglophones.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lars

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, “Lars” — the 9th most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lars parses inside a full name →