Olson
surname · English · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Olson is a surname, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 3rd most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: anglicization of Danish and Norwegian Olsen or related Swedish Olsson.
- AGAntigua & Barbuda1 in 221◐
- USUnited States1 in 2K
- CACanada1 in 2.2K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈166K ●
- #721 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 497 ●
- 1 in 2.0K ◐
across 9 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
1.6M records
Official registry-verified
United States
Spellings & scripts●
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●
anglicization of Danish and Norwegian Olsen or related Swedish Olsson
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 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 | #133 | 164,035 | 1.4M rec. | 1 in 2K | 164K | Olson | 497 |
| GB United Kingdom | #428 | 46,860 | 47K rec. | — | listed | Olson | 109 |
| CA Canada | #128 | 33,335 | 32K rec. | — | 1 | Olson | 177 |
| AU Australia | #453 | 17,401 | 17K rec. | — | — | Olson | 104 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #3 | 7,728 | 22K rec. | — | 4 | Olson | 3 |
| IT Italy | #218 | 7,431 | 7.6K rec. | — | — | Olson | 25 |
| DE Germany | — | 4,250 | 4.2K rec. | — | — | Olson | 72 |
| IL Israel | — | 3,565 | 3.6K rec. | — | — | Olson | 18 |
| PH Philippines | — | 3,552 | 3.7K rec. | — | — | Olson | 29 |
| SG Singapore | #174 | 3,162 | 3.2K rec. | — | — | Olson | 14 |
| EG Egypt | — | 3,071 | 3.1K rec. | — | — | Olson | 12 |
| DZ Algeria | #35 | 2,427 | 2.5K rec. | — | — | Olson | 9 |
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●
- English1.6M85%
- Spanish76K4%
- 55K3%
- German14K1%
- Portuguese11K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| English | 1,577,597 | 85% |
| Spanish | 75,837 | 4% |
| 55,320 | 3% | |
| German | 13,978 | 1% |
| Portuguese | 11,223 | 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●
Olson is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A patrilineal surname from Swedish.
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 |
|---|---|
| 1927 | 6 |
| 1939 | 8 |
| 1946 | 7 |
| 1949 | 5 |
| 1952 | 6 |
| 1955 | 5 |
| 1956 | 5 |
| 1957 | 8 |
| 1960 | 5 |
| 1968 | 6 |
| 1982 | 5 |
| 1997 | 5 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2010 | 6 |
| 2011 | 6 |
| 2013 | 10 |
| 2014 | 15 |
| 2015 | 12 |
| 2016 | 16 |
| 2017 | 14 |
| 2018 | 22 |
| 2019 | 13 |
| 2020 | 14 |
| 2021 | 14 |
| 2022 | 21 |
| 2023 | 27 |
| 2024 | 36 |
| 2025 | 30 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 30 years between 1927–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Nancy Olsonb. 1928USAmerican actress
- James Olsonb. 1930USAmerican actor (1930–2022)
- Mancur Olsonb. 1932USAmerican economist (1932–1998)
- Theodore Olsonb. 1940USAmerican lawyer (1940–2024)
- Barbara Olsonb. 1955USAmerican lawyer (1955-2001)
- Kaitlin Olsonb. 1975USAmerican actress
- India Summerb. 1975USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Bree Olsonb. 1986USformer American pornographic actress (born 1986)
- Olivia Olsonb. 1992USAmerican actress and singer
- Josh Olsonb. 2000USAmerican screenwriter
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 46 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 164K | #157 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 164K | #136 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 156K | #166 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 725 | #1,347 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 369 | #23,902 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 302 | #5,069 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 289 | #27,260 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 150 | #14,339 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 103 | #5,287 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 71 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 52 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 42 | #50,505 |
Reference works 4
- 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 · 142 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Olson?
- We estimate roughly 166 thousand people bear Olson (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Olson have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 164 thousand people bear Olson in the United States, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled olson.
- How common is Olson compared with other names?
- In the United States, Olson is the 133rd most common surname of 7,257,200 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Olson mean?
- Recorded meaning: anglicization of Danish and Norwegian Olsen or related Swedish Olsson
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/olsonThe 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, “Olson” — the 133rd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.