Olsen
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Olsen is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Greenland it is the 2nd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Danish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’.
- GLGreenland1 in 34◐
- NONorway1 in 41
- DKDenmark1 in 137
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈349K ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 456 ●
- 1 in 34 ◐
across 13 countries
recorded for this name
650K records
Official registry-verified
Greenland
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Olson in KR South Korea, KP North Korea.
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 Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #450 | 164,035 | 520K rec. | 1 in 2K | 164K | Olsen | 456 |
| NO Norway | #3 | 134,046△ | 19K rec. | 1 in 41 | 134K | Olsen | 140 |
| DK Denmark | #14 | 42,709△ | 12K rec. | 1 in 137 | 43K | Olsen | 188 |
| AU Australia | #382 | 20,184 | 19K rec. | — | — | Olsen | 165 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 19,591 | 18K rec. | — | listed | Olsen | 117 |
| CA Canada | #394 | 14,882 | 14K rec. | — | 2 | Olsen | 133 |
| DE Germany | — | 3,823 | 3.5K rec. | — | — | Olsen | 99 |
| SE Sweden | #223 | 2,873 | 2.8K rec. | 1 in 3.6K | 2.9K | Olsen | 69 |
| IT Italy | — | 2,404 | 2.6K rec. | — | — | Olsen | 16 |
| NZ New Zealand | #238 | 2,220 | 1.6K rec. | — | — | Olsen | 89 |
| GL Greenland | #2 | 1,704△ | 30 rec. | 1 in 34 | 1.7K | Olsen | 18 |
| IL Israel | — | 1,322 | 1.5K rec. | — | — | Olsen | 11 |
Roughly 164K people in United States bear this name (about 1 in 2K). 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●
- English536K51%
- Danish155K15%
- Norwegian Bokmål134K13%
- Norwegian76K7%
- Spanish27K3%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 535,884 | 51% |
| Danish | 154,857 | 15% |
| Norwegian Bokmål | 134,048 | 13% |
| Norwegian | 75,681 | 7% |
| Spanish | 27,289 | 3% |
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●
Olsen 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 Danish, a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A patrilineal surname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Merlin, US sports analyst, football
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, player
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 |
|---|---|
| 1989 | 5 |
| 2003 | 6 |
| 2005 | 7 |
| 2006 | 9 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2010 | 7 |
| 2011 | 10 |
| 2012 | 19 |
| 2013 | 16 |
| 2014 | 13 |
| 2015 | 22 |
| 2016 | 20 |
| 2017 | 28 |
| 2018 | 18 |
| 2019 | 24 |
| 2020 | 33 |
| 2021 | 31 |
| 2022 | 34 |
| 2023 | 44 |
| 2024 | 64 |
| 2025 | 66 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 22 years between 1989–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Moroni Olsenb. 1889USAmerican actor (1889–1954)
- Ken Olsenb. 1926USAmerican engineer and businessman (1926–2011)
- Merlin Olsenb. 1940USAmerican football player and actor (1940-2010)
- Morten Olsenb. 1949DKDanish footballer
- Eric Christian Olsenb. 1977USAmerican actor
- Daniela Ruahb. 1983USnot in their usual nameAmerican-Portuguese actress and director
- Mary-Kate Olsenb. 1986USAmerican businesswoman and actress (born 1986)
- Ashley Olsenb. 1986USAmerican businesswoman, fashion designer and actress (born 1986)
- Elizabeth Olsenb. 1989USAmerican actress (born 1989)
- Robin Olsenb. 1990SESwedish association football player
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 52 sources across 29 countries.
Reference works 5
- 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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 176 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Olsen?
- We estimate roughly 349 thousand people bear Olsen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 13 countries in our records.
- In which country does Olsen have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 164 thousand people bear Olsen in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled olsen.
- Where is Olsen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Olsen is densest in Greenland — about 1 in 34 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Olsen compared with other names?
- In the United States, Olsen is the 450th most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Olsen mean?
- Recorded meaning: son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/olsenThe 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, “Olsen” — the 450th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.