Nilsen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnɪɫsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nilsen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country, where it is the most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 58(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 26as Nielsen
- SESweden1 in 70as Nilsson
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 Nilsen 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.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 411 (measured from records)
- 1 in 58 (inferred from the name graph)
222,355 named Nielsen
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Nielsen in DK Denmark, GL Greenland, Nilsson in SE Sweden, BJ Benin and Nielson in US United States.
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)
son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nilsen is read(measured from records)
Nilsen is one spelling over 2 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.
- English41%
son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
- Norwegian36%
patronymic from the personal name Nils, a reduced form of Nikolaus (see Nicholas).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
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)
Nilsen 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 | #1 | 222,355as Nielsen | 1 in 26 | 222K | Nielsen | 277 |
| SE Sweden | #3 | 145,463as Nilsson | 1 in 70 | 145K | Nilsson | 219 |
| NO Norway | #4 | 94,971 | 1 in 58 | 95K | Nilsen | 148 |
| US United States | #911 | 42,773as Nielsen | 1 in 7.8K | 43K | Nielson | 411 |
| BJ Benin | #4 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 325 | — | Nilsson | 10 |
| GL Greenland | #82 | 1,346as Nielsen | 1 in 43 | 1.3K | Nielsen | 29 |
222,355 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); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Thorvald Nilsenb. 1881NONorwegian explorer (1881–1940)
- Adolf Nilsenb. 1895NONorwegian rower
- Vladimir Nilsenb. 1906RUSoviet cinematographer (1906-1938)
- Dennis Nilsenb. 1945GBScottish serial killer (1945–2018)
- Lillebjørn Nilsenb. 1950NONorwegian singer-songwriter
- Roger Nilsenb. 1969NONorwegian footballer
- Kurt Nilsenb. 1978NONorwegian musician
- Ørjan Nilsenb. 1982NONorwegian DJ and record producer
- Siri Nilsenb. 1985NONorwegian singer
- Chris Nilsenb. 1998USAmerican pole vaulter
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 42 sources across 22 countries.
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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 Nilsen mean, and where does it come from?
- son of Niels, a reduced form of Nickolaus ‘Nicholas’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Nilsen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnɪɫsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nilsen have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 222 thousand people named Nielsen, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Nilsen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nilsen is densest in Norway — about 1 in 58 people — even though Denmark holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nilsen?
- In Norway, the national register counted 94,971 people named Nilsen, about 1 in 58 residents.
- How common is Nilsen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Nilsen is the most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nilsen?
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/nilsenThe 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, “Nilsen” — the most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.