Names of Denmark DK

Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) records Nielsen as the commonest surname in Denmark; the names that most distinguish Denmark from the rest of the world are Jensen, Hansen and Pedersen.

Written in Danish.

Population
5.9M
Official registers
2
Name forms recorded
30K
ABuilt from 2 official registers (2024), 30,153 name forms in our corpus, 14 cited works.

Official registers for given names and surnames, plus a written account of the naming system.

The account of the naming system rests on encyclopaedia and genealogy sources; it has not yet been checked against onomastic literature.

fewerlarger share
Where the names most characteristic of Denmark are borne outside it — the same spelling, counted in our record corpus. Shares are of all bearers of those names anywhere, Denmark included.

How names work in Denmark

2 naming traditions are in use in Denmark, listed in the order of the country's languages. They are separate systems, not variants of one, and each has its own page.

The most common names in Denmark

Counts not recorded by the publisher · authority tier 2
Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present), 2024 — 50 given names counted over a population the publisher did not record, girls only, as the register publishes them.
#NameBearers recordedOur rank
1Emma44557
2Ella437—
3Luna423—
4Alma415—
5Frida408—
6Olivia390—
7Ida38755
8Agnes382—
9Karla379—
10Nora373—
11Sofia367—
12Ellie351—
13Lily351—
14Freja348—
15Clara302—
16Asta296—
17Anna294—
18Alberte276—
19Esther260—
20Ellen256—

Where the two lists disagree

25 of Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present)'s top 25 given names sit five or more places away in our record corpus. Neither ranking is wrong; they count different people.

Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) 2024Across all recordsemma: 1 → 57 · ranks lower across all records1. emma57ella: 2 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country2. ellanot rankedluna: 3 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country3. lunanot rankedalma: 4 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country4. almanot rankedfrida: 5 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country5. fridanot rankedolivia: 6 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country6. olivianot rankedida: 7 → 55 · ranks lower across all records7. ida55agnes: 8 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country8. agnesnot rankedkarla: 9 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country9. karlanot rankednora: 10 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country10. noranot rankedsofia: 11 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country11. sofianot rankedellie: 12 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country12. ellienot rankedlily: 13 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country13. lilynot rankedfreja: 14 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country14. frejanot rankedclara: 15 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country15. claranot rankedasta: 16 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country16. astanot rankedanna: 17 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country17. annanot rankedalberte: 18 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country18. albertenot rankedesther: 19 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country19. esthernot rankedellen: 20 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country20. ellennot rankedaya: 21 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country21. ayanot rankedastrid: 22 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country22. astridnot rankedisabella: 23 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country23. isabellanot rankedjosefine: 24 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country24. josefinenot rankedleonora: 25 → not ranked · not in our corpus’s top ranks for this country25. leonoranot ranked
Hover a line for what is available to explain that row.
Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present), 2024 on the left; every record we hold for Denmark on the right. A dashed line means the name is not in our top ranks for this country at all.

The register counts one population in one year — everyone it enumerates, once. Our corpus counts records: historical registers going back decades, the diaspora, business and place records, and several generations of births. A name that was common two generations ago outranks a name common today; a name whose spelling scatters across sources (diacritics dropped, transliterated differently) loses ground, because only its dominant spelling is ranked.

Characteristic of Denmark

Not the most common names — the most distinctive ones. A name appears here when Denmark holds a larger share of its bearers than the world does, weighted by how much of the country's whole name distribution it accounts for.

HenrikLarsChristianSørenMortenJesperMetteMadsJørgenAndersRasmusJensMikkelNielsOleLeneClausSusannePerKasperHanneLouisePoulJonasRikkeJettePiaPernillePeterBentOliverBenteLasseIngeJacobBjarneCecilieTobiasReneMagnusKnudUllaEmilNannaKatrineMathiasCamillaAlexanderTrineLisJeppeDortheFrejaMajaAnetteSigneIngerStinePrebenLærke
Sized by how much of the difference between Denmark's name distribution and the world's this name accounts for. Hover for its share here against its share worldwide.●

Over time

SofieEmmaJulieCamillaIda198520241,412
Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present), 1985–2024 (40 years). The line is that register's own figure for each year — not a total across registers, which would count the same people twice. The publisher labels this series “flow”.

Up to five names at a time.

Scripts & spelling

Nielsensurname●
Jensensurname●
Hansensurname●
Andersensurname●
Pedersensurname●
The best-attested names in Denmark, in the spelling our records use there. Where a Latin spelling is also attested it is shown beneath — a spelling from the corpus, not a machine romanisation.

Countries whose names look alike

Measured as the overlap between each country's top 300 given-name forms, weighted by how common each is — the fuzzy-set approach of Lauc (2024), on a truncated inventory.

Registers & sources

Official registers

  • Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)headline (surnames)

    Danmarks Statistik. Counts: not recorded. given and surname. 82,494 forms. Licence: Open data Denmark.

    What we know about this register

    Living-population counts of people currently bearing a given name (split Mænd/Kvinder) or surname (combined). Deliberately NOT in StatBank; the AJAX lookup form is the only source. Counts use the Danish thousands separator '.' and are suppressed below a discretion threshold. No enumeration endpoint — queried name-by-name from a seed list of Scandinavian given/surname tokens. Snapshot year stamped in the response (2026). Fetcher scripts/fetch_dk_dst.py is re-runnable with a cache-backed resumable checkpoint under raw/DK/dst_cache/.

    Last verified 2026-06-03.

  • Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present)2024headline (given)

    Danmarks Statistik. Counts: not recorded. given. 50 forms. 1985–2024. Licence: Open data Denmark.

    What we know about this register

    Top-50 names for newborns annually (top-25 to 1992, top-50 from 1993). Interactive name barometer. Individual name time-series via StatBank API.

    Last verified 2026-05-09.

Cited works

Behind this page's own account — its one-line answer, its explanation of why the rankings differ, and the notes on its registers. Each naming tradition cites its own sources on its page. Not yet checked against onomastic literature.

About this data

Official figures are reproduced from the register named beside them, at the year named beside them, and are never combined across registers. The "across all records" ranking counts records in our own corpus — historical registers, the diaspora, business and place records — and is not a population count. Bearer estimates are omitted where a name accounts for more than a quarter of a country's records, because the estimate is not defensible there. Names listed by reference works and licensed name dictionaries are cited as attesting a name; their figures are not published.

Data snapshot: 2026-09-12.

Questions

What is the most common given name in Denmark?
Emma, according to Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) (2024), with 445 bearers recorded among girls.
What is the most common surname in Denmark?
Nielsen, according to Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts), with 222,355 bearers recorded.
Why do sources disagree about the commonest name in Denmark?
Because they count different people. Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) (2024) counts one population once, and its commonest given name is Emma. Our corpus counts every record we hold — historical registers, the diaspora, decades of births — and its commonest is Jan. Both are on this page, each with its denominator.
Is there one naming system in Denmark?
No — 2 are described on this page (Faroese, Scandinavian), and they are separate systems rather than variants of one.

Cite this page: Mondonomo, “Names of Denmark”, https://nelma.mondonomo.ai/names/DK (data snapshot 2026-09-12). Official figures from Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present).