Jens
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: a male given name from Low German or Danish, variant of Johannes, equivalent to English John
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jɛns/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jens is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country, where it is the 44th most common given name.
- DKDenmark1 in 145(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 298
- SESweden1 in 555
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.
- Germany (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 300 (measured from records)
- 1 in 145 (inferred from the name graph)
≈270,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from the personal name Jens, a reduced form of Johannes (see John).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 10 languages in the etymology graph.
How Jens is read(measured from records)
Jens is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German70%
a male given name from Low German or Danish, variant of Johannes, equivalent to English John
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Patronymisch aus einem Rufnamen; 495 Träger.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
männl. Vom., dänische und nieder deutsch-friesische Form von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- Danish16%
a male given name, equivalent to English John
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English5.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Jens in English.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Jens, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jens 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #44 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 298 | — | Jens | 300 |
| DK Denmark | #9 | 40,558 | 1 in 145 | 41K | Jens | 210 |
| SE Sweden | #137 | 18,378 | 1 in 555 | 18K | Jens | 127 |
| CN China | — | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Jens | 14 |
| NL Netherlands | #511 | 8,539 | 1 in 2K | 8.5K | Jens | 86 |
| NO Norway | #133 | 8,373 | 1 in 653 | 23K | Jens | 107 |
| IS Iceland | #395 | 206 | 1 in 1.7K | 232 | Jens | 33 |
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: Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry); Hagstofa Íslands — Given-name frequency by population (2005). 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)
Jens is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from the personal name Jens, a reduced form of Johannes (see John).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Swedish, Jens är en lågtysk och dansk form av → Johannes. Namnet har varit vanligast i Sydsverige. En känd namnbärare är författaren Jens Lapidus (f. 1974). I den rikssvenska almanackan 29 mars och i den finlandssvenska 24 juni.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Jens Peter Jacobsenb. 1847DKDanish novelist, poet, scientist (1847-1885)
- Jens Otto Kragb. 1914DKDanish politician (1914-1978)
- Jens Christian Skoub. 1918DKDanish chemist (1918-2018)
- Jens Fink-Jensenb. 1956DKDanish writer
- Stoltenberg, Jensb. 1959NOMinister of Finance, former prime minister of Norway and NATO secretary general
- Thomas Dollb. 1966DEnot in their usual nameGerman association football manager (born 1966)
- Jens Lehmannb. 1969DEGerman association football player (born 1969)
- Jens Nowotnyb. 1974DEGerman association football player
- Jens Bergenstenb. 1979SESwedish video game programmer (born 1979)
- Jens Spahnb. 1980DEGerman politician
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 71 sources across 30 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- How do you pronounce Jens?
- A machine transcription gives /jɛns/ (IPA) for German.
- What are other forms of the name Jens?
- In the etymology graph, John, Juan and Ivan are forms of the same name in other languages; Hans, Jannik and Jannick are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Jens a male or female name?
- Jens is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Jens mean?
- In German, a male given name from Low German or Danish, variant of Johannes, equivalent to English John
- Where does the name Jens come from?
- from the personal name Jens, a reduced form of Johannes (see John). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How common is the name Jens?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 40,558 people named Jens, about 1 in 145 residents.
- How common is Jens compared with other names?
- In Germany, Jens is the 44th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Jens have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 269 thousand people named Jens in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jens.
- Where is Jens most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Jens is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 145 people — even though Germany holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Jens?
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/jensThe 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, “Jens” — the 44th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.