Karstens
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Patronymic from Karsten
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
Karstens is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Congo - Kinshasa than in any other country.
- DEGermany≈1 in 42K(inferred from the name graph)
- DKDenmark1 in 42K
- NLNetherlands1 in 57K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Congo - Kinshasa (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 172 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 42K (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,100 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Patronymic from Karsten. The spelling Carstens is more common.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world
(measured from records)Karstens 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 49K | — | Karstens | 1 |
| DE Germany | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 42K | listed | Karstens | 82 |
| US United States | 633 | 1 in 525K | 737 | Karstens | 172 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈420 est. | ≈1 in 135K | — | Karstens | 16 |
| NL Netherlands | 304 | 1 in 57K | 304 | Karstens | 14 |
| DK Denmark | 139 | 1 in 42K | 139 | Karstens | 24 |
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 2020; the dfa-band-1 register; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)Karstens 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 Latvian, nedaudz karsts
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)- Heinrich Karstensb. 1874EEBaltic German mathematician (1874-1905)
- Harry Karstensb. 1878USAmerican government official, mountain climber and outdoorsman
- Willem Karel Hendrik Karstensb. 1908NLbotanist (1908-1989)
- Bob Karstensb. 1915USAmerican basketball player (1915–2004)
- Gerben Karstensb. 1942NLDutch road bicycle racer (1942–2022)
- Torben Karstensb. 1979DEGerman actor
- Jeff Karstensb. 1982USAmerican baseball player
- Katharina Molitorb. 1983DEnot in their usual nameGerman javelin thrower
- Anke Karstensb. 1985DEGerman snowboarder
- Sofia KarstensUSCanadian 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)16 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 737 | #33,302 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 674 | #32,227 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 633 | #35,537 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 304 | #6,739 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 139 | #3,911 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 2 | — | — | — |
| 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
- Where does the name Karstens come from?
- Patronymic from Karsten. The spelling Carstens is more common. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What does the name Karstens mean?
- Recorded meaning: Patronymic from Karsten.
- In which country does Karstens have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.1 thousand people named Karstens in Congo - Kinshasa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karstens.
- How common is the name Karstens?
- In the United States, the national register counted 633 people named Karstens in 2010, about 1 in 525 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Karstens?
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/karstensThe 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, “Karstens”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.