Karlen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: German and Swiss German; derivative of Karl
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Karlen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Switzerland than in any other country. In Falkland Islands (Malvinas) it is the 24th most common surname.
- USUnited States1 in 419K(measured from records)
- FKFalkland Islands (Malvinas)≈1 in 1.5K
- CHSwitzerland1 in 7.7K
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.
- Switzerland (measured from records)
- Sources
- 193 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
1,087 people, 2024
Highest-authority source
Falkland Islands (Malvinas), est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
German and Swiss German; derivative of Karl.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Karlen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | — | 1,087 | 1 in 7.7K | 1.1K | Karlen | 34 |
| SE Sweden | — | 1,072 | 1 in 9.5K | 1.1K | Karlen | 23 |
| US United States | — | 794 | 1 in 419K | 920 | Karlen | 193 |
| AR Argentina | — | 582 | 1 in 78K | 582 | — | 3 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 208 | 1 in 16K | 208 | — | — |
| FI Finland | — | 100 | 1 in 56K | 100 | — | 3 |
| FK Falkland Islands (Malvinas) | #24 | ≈2 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Karlen | 1 |
1,087 people counted by BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames), 2024. 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; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Karlen is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Danish, definite singular of karl
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Johann Karlenb. 1807CHSwiss politician (1807-1872)
- Jakob Karlenb. 1809CHSwiss politician and entrepreneur (1809-1870)
- Johann Jakob Karlenb. 1819CHSwiss farmer (1819-1873)
- Delmar Karlenb. 1912USborn:1912|died:1988|; Karlen, Delmar (1912- ).; Karlen, Delmar, 1912-1988
- Ernst Heinrich Karlenb. 1922CHRoman Catholic Bishop (1922-2012)
- John Karlenb. 1933USAmerican actor (1933–2020)
- Arno Karlenb. 1937USAmerican poet and author (1937-2010)
- Gaëtan Karlenb. 1993CHfootballer
- Gregory Karlenb. 1995CHassociation football player
- Dean KarlenCACanadian physicist
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 38 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 1.1K | #1,079 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 920 | #25,272 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 919 | #27,762 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 794 | #29,661 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 582 | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 208 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 56 | #20,559 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 3 | #64,649 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Karlen mean, and where does it come from?
- German and Swiss German; derivative of Karl. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Karlen have the most bearers?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted about 1.1 thousand people named Karlen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karlen.
- How common is the name Karlen?
- In Switzerland, the national register counted 1,087 people named Karlen in 2024, about 1 in 7.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Karlen compared with other names?
- In Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Karlen is the 24th most common surname of 405 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karlen?
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/karlenThe 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, “Karlen” — the 24th most common surname in Falkland Islands (Malvinas). Data snapshot 2026-10-10.