Olsen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/owlsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Olsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Norway it is the 2nd most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 41(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 137
- USUnited States1 in 2Kas Olson
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Olsen itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 508 (measured from records)
- 1 in 34 (inferred from the name graph)
164,035 named Olson, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Greenland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Olson in KP North Korea.
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)
son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Olsen is read(measured from records)
Olsen 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.
- English70%
son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A patrilineal surname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Merlin, US sports analyst, football
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
player
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Norwegian8.3%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Olsen in Norwegian.
- Danish6.9%
a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Olsen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #450 | 164,035as Olson | 1 in 2K | 164K | Olsen | 508 |
| CN China | — | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 8.9K | — | Olsen | 13 |
| NO Norway | #2 | 134,046 | 1 in 41 | 134K | Olsen | 170 |
| DK Denmark | #15 | 42,709 | 1 in 137 | 43K | Olsen | 201 |
| KP North Korea | #35 | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Olson | 7 |
| GL Greenland | #2 | 1,704 | 1 in 34 | 1.7K | Olsen | 18 |
164,035 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling olson. 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; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Moroni Olsenb. 1889USAmerican actor (1889–1954)
- Ken Olsenb. 1926USAmerican engineer and businessman (1926–2011)
- Merlin Olsenb. 1940USAmerican football player and actor (1940-2010)
- Morten Olsenb. 1949DKDanish footballer
- Eric Christian Olsenb. 1977USAmerican actor
- Daniela Ruahb. 1983USnot in their usual nameAmerican-Portuguese actress and director
- Mary-Kate Olsenb. 1986USAmerican businesswoman and actress (born 1986)
- Ashley Olsenb. 1986USAmerican businesswoman, fashion designer and actress (born 1986)
- Elizabeth Olsenb. 1989USAmerican actress (born 1989)
- Robin Olsenb. 1990SESwedish association football player
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 56 sources across 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 134K | #3 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 59K | #566 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 58K | #571 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 57K | #521 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2018 | 48K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2019 | 47K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 45K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 43K | #14 |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2021 | 1.7K | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- 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
- What does the name Olsen mean, and where does it come from?
- son of Olafox Olav, a Danish and Norwegian male personal name meaning literally ‘ancestor heir’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Olsen?
- A machine transcription gives /owlsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Olsen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 164 thousand people named Olson, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Olsen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Olsen is densest in Greenland — about 1 in 34 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Olsen?
- In Norway, the national register counted 134,046 people named Olsen, about 1 in 41 residents.
- How common is Olsen compared with other names?
- In the United States, Olsen is the 450th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Olsen?
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/olsenThe 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, “Olsen” — the 450th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.