Karlsen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Norwegian: a common surname originating as a patronymic
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kːɑrlsn̩/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Karlsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 9th most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 93(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 16K
- DKDenmark1 in 869as Carlsen
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 Karlsen 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.
- Norway (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 137 (measured from records)
- 1 in 93 (inferred from the name graph)
58,908 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Danish, Norwegian, North German, and Dutch; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Karlsen is read(measured from records)
Karlsen 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.
- Norwegian43%
a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English24%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Karlsen in English.
- Danish13%
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Karlsen 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 | #9 | 58,908 | 1 in 93 | 59K | Karlsen | 137 |
| DK Denmark | #153 | 6,755as Carlsen | 1 in 869 | 6.8K | Karlsen | 116 |
| US United States | — | 4,343as Carlsen | 1 in 77K | 4.3K | Karlsen | 135 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 24K | — | Karlsen | 6 |
| SE Sweden | #846 | 634 | 1 in 16K | 634 | Karlsen | 38 |
| GL Greenland | #200 | 390 | 1 in 148 | 390 | Karlsen | 7 |
58,908 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: SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistics Greenland — Surnames (NAXT1). 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)
Karlsen 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.
Danish, Norwegian, North German, and Dutch; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In German, Patronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Karl mit -sen; auch skandinavisch möglich, Bearer count: 33.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
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)
- John Karlsenb. 1919NZNew Zealand actor (1919–2017)
- Geir Karlsenb. 1948NONorwegian footballer (1948–2024)
- Elizabeth Karlsenb. 1960USfilm producer
- Øystein Karlsenb. 1971NONorwegian screenwriter and film director
- Jan Fredrik Karlsenb. 1973NONorwegian musical manager
- Tom Cato Karlsenb. 1974NONorwegian politician and physician
- Tommy Karlsen Sandumb. 1975NONorwegian actor
- Alexandria Karlsenb. 1978USAmerican model and actress
- Morten Karlsenb. 1979DKDanish footballer
- Synnøve Karlsenb. 1996GBBritish actress
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 27 sources across 14 countries.
Reference works 6
- 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
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 Karlsen come from?
- Danish, Norwegian, North German, and Dutch; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Karlsen?
- A machine transcription gives /kːɑrlsn̩/ (IPA) for Norwegian.
- What does the name Karlsen mean?
- In Norwegian, a common surname originating as a patronymic
- In which country does Karlsen have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 59 thousand people named Karlsen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karlsen.
- Where is Karlsen most common?
- Karlsen is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 93 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Karlsen?
- In Norway, the national register counted 58,908 people named Karlsen, about 1 in 93 residents.
- How common is Karlsen compared with other names?
- In Norway, Karlsen is the 9th most common surname of 90,139 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karlsen?
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/karlsenThe 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, “Karlsen” — the 9th most common surname in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.