Karlsson
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Swedish; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: SSB PxWebApi, 2025
/ka:l`son/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Karlsson is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country, where it is the 4th most common surname.
- SESweden1 in 66(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 344
- NONorway1 in 2K
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.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 208 (measured from records)
- 1 in 24 (inferred from the name graph)
155,258 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Åland Islands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Swedish; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles).
Cited for this meaning 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Karlsson 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | #4 | 155,258 | 1 in 66 | 155K | Karlsson | 208 |
| BJ Benin | #31 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 429 | — | Karlsson | 7 |
| FI Finland | #221 | 16,204 | 1 in 344 | 16K | Karlsson | 60 |
| NO Norway | #205 | 2,802 | 1 in 2K | 2.8K | Karlsson | 55 |
| DK Denmark | #498 | 1,313 | 1 in 4.5K | 1.3K | Karlsson | 95 |
| AX Åland Islands | — | 1,080 | 1 in 24 | 1.1K | — | 10 |
155,258 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); ÅSUB — Förnamn och efternamn (50 most common first names by sex & surnames). 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)Karlsson 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 Swedish, a common surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Patronymischer Familienname zu Rufname Karl mit -sson; auch skandinavisch möglich, Bearer count: 92.
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)- Neneh Cherryb. 1964SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer
- Peter Karlssonb. 1966SEice hockey player
- Peter Karlssonb. 1969SESwedish table tennis player
- Miss Lib. 1982SEnot in their usual nameSwedish singer and songwriter
- Per Karlssonb. 1986SESwedish footballer
- Pernilla Karlssonb. 1990FIFinnish singer and handball player
- Kristian Karlssonb. 1991SESwedish table tennis player
- Mattias Karlssonb. 1991SESwedish table tennis player
- David Moberg Karlssonb. 1994SESwedish association football player
- Jesper Karlssonb. 1998SESwedish association football player (born 1998)
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)36 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.
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
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Karlsson mean, and where does it come from?
- Swedish; patronymic from the personal name Karl (see Charles). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Karlsson?
- A machine transcription gives /ka:l`son/ (IPA) for Swedish.
- In which country does Karlsson have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 155 thousand people named Karlsson, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled karlsson.
- Where is Karlsson most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Karlsson is densest in Åland Islands — about 1 in 24 people — even though Sweden holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Karlsson?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 155,258 people named Karlsson, about 1 in 66 residents.
- How common is Karlsson compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Karlsson is the 4th most common surname of 187,334 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Karlsson?
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/karlssonThe 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, “Karlsson” — the 4th most common surname in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.