Kirsten
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A female given name from Ancient Greek
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Kirsten is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Antigua & Barbuda it is the 21st most common given name.
- NONorway1 in 872(measured from records)
- NLNetherlands≈1 in 2.1K
- AUAustralia≈1 in 2.8K
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)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 508 (measured from records)
- 1 in 170 (inferred from the name graph)
≈63,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled קירסטן in DK Denmark.
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 Christianus; one of the related forms mapped for vowel variation across Christian-names.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
How Kirsten is read(measured from records)
Kirsten 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.
- English66%
A female given name from Ancient Greek.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German13%
from Christianus; one of the related forms mapped for vowel variation across Christian-names.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
from Christian; cited as folk-etymological reshaping
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Patronymische Sippenform zu Kirsten; die Karte zeigt a/ä/e-Vokalvariation. Belege: 3912.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus
- Danish5.8%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Kirsten in Danish.
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.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Kirsten 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 | — | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Kirsten | 23 |
| US United States | #800 | 50,529 | 1 in 6.6K | 50K | Kirsten | 508 |
| DK Denmark | — | 34,588 | 1 in 170 | 35K | קירסטן | 4 |
| GB United Kingdom | #637 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.6K | 4 | Kirsten | 232 |
| AU Australia | #432 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 44 | Kirsten | 239 |
| NL Netherlands | #345 | ≈8,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 8.4K | Kirsten | 105 |
| NO Norway | #341 | 6,268 | 1 in 872 | 19K | Kirsten | 65 |
| AG Antigua & Barbuda | #21 | ≈37 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Kirsten | 2 |
| GL Greenland | — | ≈35 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | 123 | — | 5 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; QLD BDM — Top 100 Baby Names Queensland (1960–present); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); Statistics Greenland — First names (NAXT5). 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)
Kirsten 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.
Danish and Norwegian form of Christine, now well established also in the English-speaking world.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
from the personal name Kirsten, a vernacular form of Christian.
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)
- Kirsten Flagstadb. 1895NONorwegian opera singer (1895-1962)
- Kirsten Boieb. 1950DEGerman writer (born 1950)
- Kirsten Gillibrandb. 1966USAmerican politician (born 1966)
- Kirsten Nelsonb. 1970USAmerican actress and director
- Kirsten Vangsnessb. 1972USAmerican actress and screenwriter
- Kirsten Sheridanb. 1976IEIrish director, screenwriter and editor
- Kirsten Priceb. 1981USAmerican pornographic actress, model & cable television host
- Kirsten Dunstb. 1982USAmerican actress (born 1982)
- Kirsten Flipkensb. 1986BEBelgian tennis player
- Kirsten Proutb. 1990CACanadian 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 86 sources across 43 countries.
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Kirsten come from?
- from Christianus; one of the related forms mapped for vowel variation across Christian-names. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 1: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen I, Vokalismus.
- What are other forms of the name Kirsten?
- In the etymology graph, Christine, Chris and Cristina are forms of the same name in other languages; Kjersti is a recorded short or pet form; it is recorded as a short form of Kristina and Kirstine.
- Is Kirsten a male or female name?
- Kirsten is a female 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.
- In which country does Kirsten have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 63 thousand people named Kirsten in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kirsten.
- Where is Kirsten most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Kirsten is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 170 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Kirsten mean?
- In English, A female given name from Ancient Greek.
- How common is the name Kirsten?
- In the United States, the national register counted 50,529 people named Kirsten in 2020, about 1 in 6.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Kirsten compared with other names?
- In Antigua & Barbuda, Kirsten is the 21st most common given name of 3,327 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Kirsten?
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/kirstenThe 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, “Kirsten” — the 21st most common given name in Antigua & Barbuda. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.