Janssen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Dutch: alternative form of Jansen, a common surname originating as a patronymic
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒænsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Janssen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Netherlands than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname.
- NLNetherlands1 in 320(measured from records)
- BEBelgium1 in 1.2K
- DEGermany≈1 in 3.2K
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 Janssen 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.
- Netherlands (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 373 (measured from records)
- 1 in 320 (inferred from the name graph)
54,040 people, 2007
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Netherlands
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)
patronymic from Jan, a vernacular form of the personal name Johannes (see John).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Janssen is read(measured from records)
Janssen is one spelling over 3 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.
- English48%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Janssen in English.
- German20%
Patronym zu Jan/Johannes; 8961+6766 Belege. Sehr häufige -sen-Patronymform; auch Jenssen belegt.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 3: Morphologie der Familiennamen
- Dutch19%
alternative form of Jansen, a common 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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Janssen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | #6 | 54,040 | 1 in 320 | 54K | Janssen | 176 |
| DE Germany | #168 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | listed | Janssen | 188 |
| US United States | — | 11,423 | 1 in 29K | 11K | Janssen | 373 |
| BE Belgium | #42 | 9,635 | 1 in 1.2K | 9.6K | Janssen | 125 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 26K | 1 | Janssen | 113 |
| NO Norway | — | 432 | 1 in 13K | 432 | Janssen | 28 |
| GY Guyana | — | 113as Yansen | 1 in 6.6K | 113 | — | 1 |
54,040 people counted by CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007), 2007. 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; CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); the dfa-band-6 register; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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)
Janssen 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.
patronymic from Jan, a vernacular form of the personal name Johannes (see John).
as a nameDictionary of American Family 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)
- Zacharias Janssenb. 1588NLDutch spectacle maker and microscope inventor
- Jules Janssenb. 1824FRFrench astronomer (1824-1907)
- Walter Janssenb. 1887DEGerman actor (1887–1976)
- Paul Janssenb. 1926BEBelgian scientist, founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica (1926–2003)
- David Janssenb. 1931USAmerican actor (1931–1980)
- Famke Janssenb. 1964NLDutch actress
- Theo Janssenb. 1981NLDutch association football player (born 1981)
- Casey Janssenb. 1981USAmerican baseball player
- Vincent Janssenb. 1994NLDutch association football player (born 1994)
- Dominique Janssenb. 1995NLDutch 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 44 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 54K | #3 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,160 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,207 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #3,100 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 9.6K | #27 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 9.4K | #27 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 432 | #3,283 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 6 | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 Janssen come from?
- patronymic from Jan, a vernacular form of the personal name Johannes (see John). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Janssen?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒænsən/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Janssen mean?
- In Dutch, alternative form of Jansen, a common surname originating as a patronymic
- In which country does Janssen have the most bearers?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted about 54 thousand people named Janssen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled janssen.
- Where is Janssen most common?
- Janssen is densest in the Netherlands, where the national register counts about 1 in 320 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Janssen?
- In the Netherlands, the national register counted 54,040 people named Janssen in 2007, about 1 in 320 residents.
- How common is Janssen compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Janssen is the 6th most common surname of 284,143 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Janssen?
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/janssenThe 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, “Janssen” — the 6th most common surname in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.