Clausen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: ‘son of Claus’; Claus is a shortened form of Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Clausen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the 39th most common surname.
- DKDenmark1 in 479(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 11K
- USUnited States1 in 37K
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.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- Sources
- 376 (measured from records)
- 1 in 479 (inferred from the name graph)
12,257 people
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘son of Claus’; Claus is a shortened form of Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Clausen is read(measured from records)
Clausen is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English62%
‘son of Claus’; Claus is a shortened form of Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Danish13%
a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German9.0%
Norddeutsches Patronymikum mit -sen; aus Claus- + -sen, im Norden (v.a. Schleswig-Holstein) konzentriert. 2910 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
- Spanish6.0%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Clausen in Spanish.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Clausen 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 | #39 | 12,257 | 1 in 479 | 12K | Clausen | 160 |
| US United States | — | 8,906 | 1 in 37K | 8.9K | Clausen | 376 |
| DE Germany | #944 | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Clausen | 146 |
| NO Norway | #347 | 2,310 | 1 in 2.4K | 2.3K | Clausen | 50 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 54K | listed | Clausen | 9 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 550 | 1 in 15K | 550 | Clausen | 31 |
| IS Iceland | #843 | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 25K | 1 | Clausen | 24 |
12,257 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); the xinhua-italian-manual register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)
- Thomas Clausenb. 1801DKDanish mathematician and astronomer (1801–1885)
- George Clausenb. 1852GBBritish artist (1852–1944)
- Jens Clausenb. 1891USAmerican botanist (1891-1969)
- Frits Clausenb. 1893DKDanish national socialist politician (1893-1947)
- Claus Clausenb. 1899DE1899-1989 German Actor
- Stefanie Clausenb. 1900DKDanish diver (1900-1981)
- Alden W. Clausenb. 1923USAmerican businessman, President of the World Bank, 1981-1986
- Alf Clausenb. 1941USAmerican film and television composer (1941—2025)
- Pit Clausenb. 1962DEGerman judge and politician
- Murmel Clausenb. 1973DEGerman screenwriter
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 34 sources across 20 countries.
Reference works 5
- 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
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 Clausen mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘son of Claus’; Claus is a shortened form of Nikolaus ‘Nicholas’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Clausen have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 12 thousand people named Clausen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled clausen.
- Where is Clausen most common?
- Clausen is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 479 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Clausen?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 12,257 people named Clausen, about 1 in 479 residents.
- How common is Clausen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Clausen is the 39th most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Clausen?
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/clausenThe 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, “Clausen” — the 39th most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.