Madsen
surname · Danish · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Madsen is a surname, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 12th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Danish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: 'Son of Mathias', a Danish and Norwegian form of Matthew.
- DKDenmark1 in 101◐
- NONorway1 in 730
- SESweden1 in 6.3K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈86K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 305 ●
- 1 in 101 ◐
across 14 countries
recorded for this name
61K records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled หมาดเส็น in TH Thailand.
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 Mathias', a Danish and Norwegian form of Matthew.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | #12 | 58,255△ | 15K rec. | 1 in 101 | 58K | Madsen | 192 |
| US United States | — | 17,364 | 33K rec. | 1 in 19K | 17K | Madsen | 305 |
| NO Norway | #92 | 7,492△ | 1.7K rec. | 1 in 730 | 7.5K | Madsen | 78 |
| SE Sweden | #678 | 1,619△ | 655 rec. | 1 in 6.3K | 1.6K | Madsen | 54 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 1,557 | 862 rec. | — | — | Madsen | 65 |
| CA Canada | — | 1,090 | 1.1K rec. | — | 1 | Madsen | 75 |
| TH Thailand | — | 786 | 399 rec. | — | #759,717 | หมาดเส็น | 39 |
| CO Colombia | — | 357 | 325 rec. | — | — | Madsen | 11 |
| CL Chile | — | 287 | 82 rec. | — | — | Madsen | 26 |
| BR Brazil | — | 265 | 543 rec. | 1 in 799K | 265 | Madsen | 46 |
| GT Guatemala | — | 207 | 204 rec. | — | — | Madsen | 4 |
| HN Honduras | — | 205 | 203 rec. | — | — | Madsen | 15 |
Roughly 58K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 101). 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●
- Danish215K53%
- English142K35%
- Spanish8.1K2%
- Norwegian Bokmål7.5K2%
- Norwegian6K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Danish | 215,220 | 53% |
| English | 141,862 | 35% |
| Spanish | 8,118 | 2% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 7,492 | 2% |
| Norwegian | 6,018 | 1% |
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●
Madsen is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, patronymic from the given name Mads < Matthäus
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
patronymic from a pet form of Mathias (see Matthew).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Danish, a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1994 | 5 |
| 2002 | 5 |
| 2003 | 6 |
| 2007 | 6 |
| 2008 | 9 |
| 2010 | 5 |
| 2011 | 7 |
| 2012 | 10 |
| 2013 | 11 |
| 2014 | 7 |
| 2015 | 8 |
| 2016 | 9 |
| 2017 | 6 |
| 2019 | 14 |
| 2020 | 11 |
| 2021 | 8 |
| 2023 | 9 |
| 2024 | 16 |
| 2025 | 9 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 19 years between 1994–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsenb. 1844DKDanish general and politician (1844–1917)
- Karl Madsenb. 1855DKDanish painter, art historian and museum director (1855-1938)
- Ole Madsenb. 1934DKDanish footballer (1934-2006)
- Michael Madsenb. 1957USAmerican actor (1957–2025)
- Virginia Madsenb. 1961USAmerican actress
- Ole Christian Madsenb. 1966DKDanish film director and script writer
- Peter Madsenb. 1971DKDanish convicted murderer, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed engineer
- Peter Madsenb. 1978DKDanish footballer
- Mark Madsenb. 1984DKDanish martial artist and wrestler
- Christian Madsenb. 1990USAmerican actor
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 37 sources across 20 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 · 97 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Madsen?
- We estimate roughly 86 thousand people bear Madsen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
- In which country does Madsen have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 58 thousand people bear Madsen in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled madsen.
- Where is Madsen most common?
- Madsen is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 101 people carrying it.
- How common is Madsen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Madsen is the 12th most common surname of 100,227 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Madsen mean?
- Recorded meaning: 'Son of Mathias', a Danish and Norwegian form of Matthew.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/madsenThe 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, “Madsen” — the 12th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.