Christen
given name · Latin script
Meaning: To perform the religious act of baptism upon; to baptize
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Christen is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 27K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 12K
- GYGuyana1 in 58K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 124 (measured from records)
- 1 in 12K (inferred from the name graph)
12,249 people, 2020
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
To perform the religious act of baptism upon; to baptize.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Christen 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 | 12,249 | 1 in 27K | 10K | Christen | 124 |
| DK Denmark | 499 | 1 in 12K | 499 | — | — |
| SE Sweden | 87 | 1 in 117K | 87 | — | 1 |
| NL Netherlands | 15 | 1 in 1.2M | 154 | — | 2 |
| GY Guyana | 13 | 1 in 58K | 13 | — | — |
| FI Finland | 5 | 1 in 1.1M | 53 | — | 1 |
12,249 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. 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)
Christen 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, Aus Christian; Karte zu r-Schwund bzw. Konsonantenvariation.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 2: Graphematik/Phonologie der Familiennamen II, Konsonantismus
In German, männl. Vom., Nebenform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Christen Smithb. 1785NONorwegian botanist (1785-1816)
- Christen Købkeb. 1810DKDanish artist (1810-1848)
- Christen Mikkelsen Koldb. 1816DKDanish teacher (1816–1870)
- Christen Andreas Fonnesbechb. 1817DKDanish politician (1817-1880)
- Christen Dalsgaardb. 1824DKDanish painter (1824-1907)
- Christen Christensenb. 1845NONorwegian shipyard and ship-owner
- Christen C. Raunkiærb. 1860DKDanish scientist (1860–1938)
- Kit Guardb. 1894USnot in their usual nameDanish actor
- Chris Dudleyb. 1965USnot in their usual nameAmerican basketball player (born 1965)
- Christen Pressb. 1988USAmerican soccer 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 50 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.8K | #8,626 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.5K | #8,705 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 3.1K | #9,930 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 154 | #13,262 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 21 | #41,840 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 12 | #34,554 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Christen mean, and where does it come from?
- To perform the religious act of baptism upon; to baptize. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Christen a male or female name?
- Christen 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 Christen have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Christen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled christen.
- Where is Christen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Christen is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 12 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What are other forms of the name Christen?
- In the etymology graph, Christian, Kristen and Kristian are forms of the same name in other languages; Christer is a recorded short or pet form.
- How common is the name Christen?
- In the United States, the national register counted 12,249 people named Christen in 2020, about 1 in 27 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Christen?
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/christenThe 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, “Christen”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.