Nilsen
surname · Norwegian Bokmål · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Nilsen is a surname, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the most common surname. It appears chiefly in Norwegian Bokmål and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’.
- DKDenmark1 in 26◐
- GLGreenland1 in 43
- NONorway1 in 58
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈513K ●
- #880 ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 374 ●
- 1 in 26 ◐
across 12 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
500K records
Official registry-verified
Denmark
Spellings & scripts●
3 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Nielsen in DK Denmark, CA Canada, TH Thailand and 7 more, Nielson in US United States, AU Australia, IT Italy and 4 more, Nilsson in SE Sweden, FI Finland, DE Germany and 3 more and Newson in GB United Kingdom, PL Poland, ZA South Africa.
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 Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 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 | #1 | 222,355△ | 57K rec. | 1 in 26 | 222K | Nielsen | 260 |
| SE Sweden | #3 | 145,463 | 96K rec. | 1 in 70 | 145K | Nilsson | 191 |
| NO Norway | #4 | 94,971△ | 16K rec. | 1 in 58 | 95K | Nilsen | 123 |
| US United States | #844 | 42,773 | 276K rec. | 1 in 7.8K | 43K | Nielson | 374 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 16,511 | 12K rec. | — | listed | Newson | 127 |
| CA Canada | #767 | 8,466 | 7.8K rec. | — | — | Nielsen | 131 |
| AU Australia | — | 8,016 | 7.4K rec. | — | 1 | Nielson | 100 |
| FI Finland | #504 | 2,998△ | 323 rec. | 1 in 1.9K | 3K | Nilsson | 26 |
| DE Germany | — | 2,533 | 2.3K rec. | — | listed | Nilsson | 84 |
| TH Thailand | — | 2,016 | 1.3K rec. | — | #304,925 | Nielsen | 74 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,397 | 0 rec. | 1 in 33K | 1.4K | — | 1 |
| GL Greenland | #4 | 1,346△ | 35 rec. | 1 in 43 | 1.3K | Nielsen | 28 |
Roughly 222K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 26). 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 Bokmål95K54%
- English30K17%
- Norwegian27K15%
- Danish3.5K2%
- Spanish2.4K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norwegian Bokmål | 94,972 | 54% |
| English | 30,121 | 17% |
| Norwegian | 26,794 | 15% |
| Danish | 3,482 | 2% |
| Spanish | 2,424 | 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●
Nilsen 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 Norwegian, patronymic from the personal name Nils, a reduced form of Nikolaus (see Nicholas).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Norwegian, 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 |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 33,846 |
| 2019 | 33,585 |
| 2020 | 33,279 |
| 2021 | 33,035 |
| 2022 | 32,620 |
| 2023 | 32,245 |
| 2024 | 31,962 |
| 2025 | 31,657 |
NO SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) — 8 years between 2018–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Thorvald Nilsenb. 1881NONorwegian explorer (1881–1940)
- Adolf Nilsenb. 1895NONorwegian rower
- Vladimir Nilsenb. 1906RUSoviet cinematographer (1906-1938)
- Dennis Nilsenb. 1945GBScottish serial killer (1945–2018)
- Lillebjørn Nilsenb. 1950NONorwegian singer-songwriter
- Roger Nilsenb. 1969NONorwegian footballer
- Kurt Nilsenb. 1978NONorwegian musician
- Ørjan Nilsenb. 1982NONorwegian DJ and record producer
- Siri Nilsenb. 1985NONorwegian singer
- Chris Nilsenb. 1998USAmerican pole vaulter
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 40 sources across 21 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 · 139 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Nilsen?
- We estimate roughly 513 thousand people bear Nilsen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Nilsen have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 222 thousand people bear Nilsen in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled nielsen.
- Where is Nilsen most common?
- Nilsen is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 26 people carrying it.
- How common is Nilsen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Nilsen is the most common surname of 100,227 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Nilsen mean?
- Recorded meaning: son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nilsenThe 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, “Nilsen” — the most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.