Poulsen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a common surname originating as a patronymic
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/poulsn̩/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Poulsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 17th most common surname.
- DKDenmark1 in 199(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 346as Paulsen
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 10Kas Paulsen
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 Poulsen 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.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 368 (measured from records)
- 1 in 75 (inferred from the name graph)
29,488 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Greenland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Paulsen in US United States, NO Norway, DE Germany and 1 more.
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)
a common surname originating as a patronymic
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Poulsen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | #17 | 29,488 | 1 in 199 | 29K | Poulsen | 199 |
| NO Norway | #30 | 15,798as Paulsen | 1 in 346 | 16K | Paulsen | 112 |
| US United States | — | 11,243as Paulsen | 1 in 30K | 11K | Paulsen | 368 |
| DE Germany | #949 | ≈7,200 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Paulsen | 136 |
| ZA South Africa | — | ≈5,500 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Paulsen | 61 |
| GL Greenland | #9 | 765 | 1 in 75 | 765 | Poulsen | 16 |
| FO Faroe Islands | #3 | ≈28 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Poulsen | 26 |
29,488 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Poulsen 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.
In German, from Paulus
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In Norwegian, a surname originating as a patronymic
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)
- Valdemar Poulsenb. 1869DKDanish engineer (1869-1942)
- Kevin Poulsenb. 1965UShacking experience with Kevin Lee Poulsen
- Thomas Poulsenb. 1970DKDanish rower
- Søren Pape Poulsenb. 1971DKDanish politician (1971–2024)
- Troels Lund Poulsenb. 1976DKDanish politician
- Christian Poulsenb. 1980DKDanish association football player
- Jakob Poulsenb. 1983DKDanish association football player
- Simon Poulsenb. 1984DKDanish association football player (born 1984)
- Yussuf Poulsenb. 1994TZDanish association football player (born 1994)
- Andreas Poulsenb. 1999DKDanish 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 34 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 29K | #17 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.9K | #8,145 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.9K | #8,496 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.5K | #8,545 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 930 | #1,255 |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2011 | 808 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2014 | 805 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2012 | 799 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2015 | 794 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2013 | 787 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2016 | 786 | — |
| GL Greenland | Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1) | 2017 | 785 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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
- 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 Poulsen mean, and where does it come from?
- a common surname originating as a patronymic Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Poulsen?
- A machine transcription gives /poulsn̩/ (IPA) for Danish.
- In which country does Poulsen have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 29 thousand people named Poulsen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled poulsen.
- Where is Poulsen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Poulsen is densest in Greenland — about 1 in 75 people — even though Denmark holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Poulsen?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 29,488 people named Poulsen, about 1 in 199 residents.
- How common is Poulsen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Poulsen is the 17th most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Poulsen?
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/poulsenThe 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, “Poulsen” — the 17th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.