Amundsen
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Amundsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country. In English, recorded as A surname of Danish and Norwegian origin.
- USUnited States1 in 187K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 390
- DKDenmark1 in 29K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Norway (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 225 (measured from records)
- 1 in 390 (inferred from the name graph)
14,014 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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 surname originating as a patronymic
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Amundsen is read(measured from records)
Amundsen is one spelling over 2 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.
- English57%
Roald, Norwegian explorer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
A surname of Danish and Norwegian origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Norwegian26%
a 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Amundsen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | #360 | 14,014 | 1 in 390 | 14K | Amundsen | 56 |
| US United States | — | 1,782 | 1 in 187K | 1.9K | Amundsen | 225 |
| SE Sweden | — | 203 | 1 in 50K | 203 | Amundsen | 8 |
| DK Denmark | — | 200 | 1 in 29K | 200 | — | 2 |
| FI Finland | — | 42 | 1 in 133K | 42 | — | 1 |
14,014 people counted by SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 2000; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Amundsen 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 Croatian, norveški istraživač polarnih krajeva, prvi stigao do Južnog pola (1911)
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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)
- Jens Amundsenb. 1820NONorwegian ship-owner and businessperson (1820-1886)
- Roald Amundsenb. 1872NONorwegian explorer; first person to reach the South Pole (1872–1928)
- Olaf Amundsenb. 1876NONorwegian politician (1876-1939)
- Arthur Amundsenb. 1886NOgymnast (1886–1936)
- Roald Amundsenb. 1913NONorwegian footballer (1913-1985)
- Tom Amundsenb. 1943NONorwegian rower
- Steinar Amundsenb. 1945NOCanoe racer (1945–2022)
- Mitchell Amundsenb. 1958USAmerican cinematographer and actor
- Per-Willy Amundsenb. 1971NONorwegian politician
- Harald Østberg Amundsenb. 1998NONorwegian cross-country skier
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 19 sources across 11 countries.
Reference works 3
- 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 Amundsen come from?
- a surname originating as a patronymic Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What does the name Amundsen mean?
- In English, A surname of Danish and Norwegian origin.
- In which country does Amundsen have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 14 thousand people named Amundsen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled amundsen.
- Where is Amundsen most common?
- Amundsen is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 390 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Amundsen?
- In Norway, the national register counted 14,014 people named Amundsen, about 1 in 390 residents.
- How common is Amundsen compared with other names?
- In Norway, Amundsen is the 360th most common surname of 90,139 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Amundsen?
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/amundsenThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Amundsen” — the 360th most common surname in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.