Essén

surname · Latin script

Essén is a surname written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States. Recorded meaning: German city and surname, often confused with essen (“eating”), but this is not related. The city's oldest name, Astnide, could be related to Old High German asc (“ash tree”).

United States (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
12 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

German city and surname, often confused with essen (“eating”), but this is not related. The city's oldest name, Astnide, could be related to Old High German asc (“ash tree”). The surname is from the city.

Sources 3

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Essén counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Essén is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—482—11
SE Sweden—259—9
NL Netherlands—118—9
FI Finland—57—12
NO Norway—44——

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Essén is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Ėssen, Essen, Essën

  • German surname16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Poland, Belgium, United States

    Languages: German, English, Dutch

    Also written Essen, Eßen, Essèn, Èssen

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, Poland, Belgium, France

    Also written Essen

  • Portuguese name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Germany, Portugal, Spain

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Essen

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Essen

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Essen

2 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(measured from records)

18001850190019502000Ludvig Essén, b. 1847Axel Essén, b. 1880Gertrud Essén, b. 1882Arre Essén, b. 1886Rütger Essén, b. 1890Ingeborg Essén, b. 1890Thure Essén, b. 1914Ragna Essén, b. 1946Maria Essén, b. 1968Oskar Essén, b. 1985

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(measured from records)

Attested in 4 sources across 2 countries.

Official registers attesting Essén
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—259#3,378
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—57#20,176
FI FinlandDVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register)—31—

Reference works 1

  • 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 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Essén mean, and where does it come from?
German city and surname, often confused with essen (“eating”), but this is not related. The city's oldest name, Astnide, could be related to Old High German asc (“ash tree”). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples) and 1 other source.
In which country does Essén have the most bearers?
Essén is most frequently recorded in the United States.

What do you want to know about Essén?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ess%C3%A9n

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

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, “Essén”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Essén parses inside a full name →