Jacobsen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 2606 bearers. Patronymic to Jakob/Jacob with suffix -sen; maps the -sen variant against -s and Ø forms
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/dʒejkəbsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jacobsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Faroe Islands it is the 2nd most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 241(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 257
- USUnited States1 in 18K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 407 (measured from records)
- 1 in 241 (inferred from the name graph)
≈84,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
2606 bearers. Patronymic to Jakob/Jacob with suffix -sen; maps the -sen variant against -s and Ø forms.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jacobsen 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈84,000 est. | ≈1 in 17K | — | Jacobsen | 6 |
| DK Denmark | #25 | 22,866 | 1 in 257 | 23K | Jacobsen | 184 |
| NO Norway | #17 | 22,708 | 1 in 241 | 23K | Jacobsen | 129 |
| US United States | — | 18,820 | 1 in 18K | 19K | Jacobsen | 407 |
| BR Brazil | — | 3,322 | 1 in 64K | 3.3K | — | 5 |
| GL Greenland | — | 65 | 1 in 886 | 65 | — | 9 |
| IS Iceland | #651 | ≈56 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | listed | Jacobsen | 24 |
| FO Faroe Islands | #2 | ≈38 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Jacobsen | 23 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); the is-arnastofnun-aettarnofn register; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Jacobsen is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Danish, a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Patronymische Bildung mit -sen zu Jacob; norddeutsche Variante. Bearer count: 2606.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
patronymic from Jacob.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- J. C. Jacobsenb. 1811DKDanish industrialist and philanthropist (1811—1887)
- Carl Jacobsenb. 1842DKDanish brewer, art collector and philanthropist (1842–1914)
- Jens Peter Jacobsenb. 1847DKDanish novelist, poet, scientist (1847-1885)
- Arne Jacobsenb. 1902DKDanish architect and designer (1902–1971)
- Thorkild Jacobsenb. 1904USDanish Assyriologist and archaeologist (1904–1993)
- Robert Jacobsenb. 1912DKDanish artist (1912–1993)
- Inger Jacobsenb. 1923NONorwegian singer (1923–1996)
- Annie Jacobsenb. 1967USAmerican journalist
- Lars Jacobsenb. 1979DKDanish footballer
- Stephanie Jacobsenb. 1980AUAustralian actress
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 38 sources across 22 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Jacobsen mean, and where does it come from?
- 2606 bearers. Patronymic to Jakob/Jacob with suffix -sen; maps the -sen variant against -s and Ø forms. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen.
- How do you pronounce Jacobsen?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒejkəbsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Jacobsen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 84 thousand people named Jacobsen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jacobsen.
- Where is Jacobsen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jacobsen is densest in Norway — about 1 in 241 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Jacobsen?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 22,866 people named Jacobsen, about 1 in 257 residents.
- How common is Jacobsen compared with other names?
- In Faroe Islands, Jacobsen is the 2nd most common surname of 497 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jacobsen?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jacobsenThe 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, “Jacobsen” — the 2nd most common surname in Faroe Islands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.