Nilsén

surname · Latin script

Nilsén is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the most common surname. Recorded meaning: Originally a patronymic from Nils + -sen. Cognate with Danish Nielsen and Swedish Nilsson.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 58(measured from records)
  • DKDenmark1 in 26as Nielsen
  • SESweden1 in 70as Nilsson

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Nilsén itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Denmark (measured from records)

222,355 named Nielsen

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
411 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 58 (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NielsenLatin(measured from records)
นีลเซ่นThai(measured from records)
ΝιλσενGreek(measured from records)
닐슨Hangul(measured from records)

4 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Nielsen in DK Denmark, GL Greenland, Nilsson in SE Sweden, BJ Benin, Nielson in US United States and Nilsen in NO Norway.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Originally a patronymic from Nils + -sen. Cognate with Danish Nielsen and Swedish Nilsson.

Sources 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Wiktionary
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

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

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Nilsén is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DK Denmark#1222,355as Nielsen1 in 26222KNielsen277
SE Sweden#3145,463as Nilsson1 in 70145KNilsson219
NO Norway#494,9711 in 5895KNilsen148
US United States#91142,773as Nielsen1 in 7.8K43KNielson411
BJ Benin#4≈40,000 est.≈1 in 325—Nilsson10
GL Greenland#821,346as Nielsen1 in 431.3KNielsen29

222,355 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 2010; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1). 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)

Nilsén is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, United Kingdom, Australia

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Nilsen, Nilşen

  • a separate surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Sweden, United Kingdom

    Also written Nilsen

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Nilşen, Nilsen

  • Finnish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Finland, Sweden, United States

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Nilsen

  • Spanish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Norway, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Nilsen, Nílsen, Nilşen

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, Indonesia, United States, Sweden

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Nilsen

  • Czech surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Norway, Slovakia

    Languages: Czech, Slovak

    Also written Nilsen

  • Turkish given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Norway, Cyprus, United States

    Also written Nilşen, Nilsen

1 further group 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 4 sources across 3 countries.

Official registers attesting Nilsén
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—209#3,987

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Nilsén mean, and where does it come from?
Originally a patronymic from Nils + -sen. Cognate with Danish Nielsen and Swedish Nilsson. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary and 1 other source.
In which country does Nilsén have the most bearers?
In Denmark, the national register counted about 222 thousand people named Nielsen, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Nilsén most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nilsén is densest in Norway — about 1 in 58 people — even though Denmark holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Nilsén?
In Norway, the national register counted 94,971 people named Nilsén, about 1 in 58 residents.
How common is Nilsén compared with other names?
In Denmark, Nilsén is the most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nilsén?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/nils%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, “Nilsén” — the most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nilsén parses inside a full name →