Pederson

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Pederson is a surname, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common surname. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): scattered: esp. Lancs.

rarermore common
  • DKDenmark1 in 42◐
  • NONorway1 in 56
  • SESweden1 in 2.1K

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

≈312K ●

across 11 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
338 ●

281K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 28 ◐

Greenland

Spellings & scripts●

PedersenLatin · Danish●489K records
ปีเตอร์เซนThai · Thai●29 records

Locally spelled Pedersen in DK Denmark, NO Norway, AR Argentina and 16 more and Petersen 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●

Main GB Location (1881): scattered: esp. Lancs.

Sources 1

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Pederson is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark#5140,838△36K rec.1 in 42141KPedersen224
NO Norway#798,055△13K rec.1 in 5698KPedersen118
US United States—58,480190K rec.1 in 5.7K59KPederson338
GB United Kingdom—7,6256.1K rec.——Pederson98
CA Canada—6,6246.1K rec.—1Pederson100
SE Sweden#1474,9033.5K rec.1 in 2.1K4.9KPedersen95
BR Brazil—2,629△866 rec.1 in 81K2.6KPedersen52
GL Greenland#242,087△14 rec.1 in 282.1KPedersen18
NL Netherlands—2,075△292 rec.1 in 8.3K2.1KPedersen34
AU Australia—1,9781.9K rec.——Pederson58
AR Argentina—1,7253.7K rec.1 in 26K1.7KPedersen41
TH Thailand—1,4621.2K rec.—#377,974Petersen66

Roughly 141K people in Denmark bear this name (about 1 in 42). 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●

  • English150K86%
  • Spanish6.5K4%
  • 4.6K3%
  • German1.4K1%
  • French9711%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English149,88686%
Spanish6,5374%
4,5693%
German1,3621%
French9711%

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◐

Pederson is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish surname646 records spelled Pederson9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Czechia, Russia

    Languages: Polish, Czech, Russian

    Also written Педерсон, Pedersön

  • Korean surname254 records spelled Pederson2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, North Korea, South Korea, Canada

    Also written 피더슨

39 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.

Notable people with this name●

1400160018002000Mogens Pedersøn, b. 1585Joan Wiffen, b. 1922Donald Pederson, b. 1925Con Pederson, b. 1934Sally Pederson, b. 1951Barry Pederson, b. 1961Doug Pederson, b. 1968Mark Pederson, b. 1968Ron Pederson, b. 1978Joc Pederson, b. 1992

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 9 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Pederson
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201014K#2,520
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200014K#2,366
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202014K#2,577
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—2#14,379
EE EstoniaSiseministeerium — population register name list 20232023——
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames (Census 2010 + voter-file supplement)———

Reference works 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 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 · 6 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Pederson?
We estimate roughly 312 thousand people bear Pederson (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
In which country does Pederson have the most bearers?
We estimate about 141 thousand people bear Pederson in Denmark, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled pedersen.
Where is Pederson most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pederson is densest in Greenland — about 1 in 28 people — even though Denmark holds more of our records for it.
How common is Pederson compared with other names?
In Denmark, Pederson is the 5th most common surname of 100,227 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Pederson mean?
Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): scattered: esp. Lancs.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pederson

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, “Pederson” — the 5th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Pederson parses inside a full name →