Steen

surname · Latin script

Meaning: contracted Scottish form of the personal name Stephen; or person who lives in stony ground, or works with stone, from Low German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish sten ‘stone’

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈstin/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Steen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 83rd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 884(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 4.4K
  • DKDenmark1 in 4.5K

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.

United States (measured from records)

12,989 people, 2010

Sources
405 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 884 (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

contracted Scottish form of the personal name Stephen; or person who lives in stony ground, or works with stone, from Low German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish sten ‘stone’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Steen 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.

Where Steen is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—12,9891 in 26K13KSteen405
NO Norway#986,1861 in 8846.2KSteen90
DE Germany—≈2,800 est.≈1 in 29KlistedSteen111
GB United Kingdom—≈2,400 est.≈1 in 27K1.2KSteen159
SE Sweden#3162,2971 in 4.4K2.3KSteen60
NL Netherlands#1131,4101 in 12K1.4KSteen109
DK Denmark#831,3111 in 4.5K13KSteen175
BE Belgium#2557001 in 17K700Steen90

12,989 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); the dfa-band-1 register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Steen is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Brazil, Argentina

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Stéen, Stééń

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Stéen, Steén

  • a separate surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Norway, United Kingdom, Netherlands

    Also written Stéen

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Indonesia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Steén

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Steén

62 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Steen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In nds, Low German word meaning ‘stone’; cited as source of high German Stein

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In English, usually, and certainly in Scotland, a shortened form of Stephen; first attested Robert le Steen 1275

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

  • In Dutch, stone (small rock)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In English, Marguerite, English novelist

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, Jan, Dutch painter

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper 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)

16001700180019002000Jan Steen, b. 1626Knut Steen, b. 1924Anitra Steen, b. 1949David Steen, b. 1954Kristine Steen, b. 1964Jessica Steen, b. 1965Fredrik Steen, b. 1969Cassandra Steen, b. 1980Alexander Steen, b. 1984Adelén, b. 1996

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)

FormalDear Mr Steen,
InformalHi Steen,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 54 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Steen
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201013K#2,776
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200012K#2,686
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202012K#2,873
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—6.2K#129
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20193.2K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20203.2K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20183.2K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20213.1K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20223.1K—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)20253.1K—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—2.3K#453
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)20071.4K#1,071

Reference works 7

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 Steen mean, and where does it come from?
contracted Scottish form of the personal name Stephen; or person who lives in stony ground, or works with stone, from Low German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish sten ‘stone’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Steen?
In the etymology graph, Stone and Stein are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Steen?
A machine transcription gives /ˈstin/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Steen have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Steen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled steen.
Where is Steen most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Steen is densest in Norway — about 1 in 884 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Steen?
In the United States, the national register counted 12,989 people named Steen in 2010, about 1 in 26 thousand residents.
How common is Steen compared with other names?
In Denmark, Steen is the 83rd most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Steen?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/steen

The 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, “Steen” — the 83rd most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Steen parses inside a full name →