Nissen
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: (i) son of Nis, a variant of the Scandinavian personal name Niels; (ii) from Yiddish Nisn, from Hebrew nisan, a Jewish month
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈnɪsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nissen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Denmark it is the 51st most common surname.
- DKDenmark1 in 645(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 13K
- USUnited States1 in 67K
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 Nissen 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 334 (measured from records)
- 1 in 645 (inferred from the name graph)
≈19,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Denmark
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)
- YiddishNisn(measured from records)
- Hebrewnisan(measured from records)
(i) son of Nis, a variant of the Scandinavian personal name Niels; (ii) from Yiddish Nisn, from Hebrew nisan, a Jewish month
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Nissen is read(measured from records)
Nissen 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.
- English59%
(i) son of Nis, a variant of the Scandinavian personal name Niels; (ii) from Yiddish Nisn, from Hebrew nisan, a Jewish month
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
prefabricated hut
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Danish16%
definite singular of nisse
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Nissen in German.
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)
Nissen 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 75K | — | Nissen | 9 |
| DK Denmark | #51 | 9,098 | 1 in 645 | 9.1K | Nissen | 138 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈6,100 est. | ≈1 in 13K | listed | Nissen | 141 |
| US United States | — | 4,964 | 1 in 67K | 5K | Nissen | 334 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,803as Niessen | 1 in 9.6K | 1.8K | Nissen | 25 |
| BE Belgium | — | 687as Niessen | 1 in 17K | 687 | Nissen | 22 |
| NO Norway | — | 396 | 1 in 14K | 396 | Nissen | 28 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Nissen is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from the Yiddish male personal name Nisn, from Hebrew nisan, the Jewish month during which Passover takes place, originally given to boys bom in that month. Compare Oder and Nissan.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
patronymic from the Scandinavian personal name Nis, variant of Nils (see Nicholas).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Marseille, Tripoli, Rio de Janeiro
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Georg Nikolaus von Nissenb. 1761DKDanish diplomat and music historian
- Constanze Mozartb. 1762DEnot in their usual nameAustrian singer
- Erika Nissenb. 1845NONorwegian musician (1845–1903)
- Anton Nissenb. 1866DKGerman landscape painter
- Peter Norman Nissenb. 1871CACanadian engineer
- Greta Nissenb. 1906NOactress (1906 – 1988)
- Brian Nissenb. 1927GBBritish actor (1927-2001)
- Errol Muskb. 1946ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African businessman (born 1946) of Dutch-British descent
- Christopherb. 1992DKnot in their usual nameDanish singer (born 1992)
- Anja Nissenb. 1995AUDanish-Australian pop singer
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 35 sources 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Nissen mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) son of Nis, a variant of the Scandinavian personal name Niels; (ii) from Yiddish Nisn, from Hebrew nisan, a Jewish month Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Nissen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈnɪsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Nissen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Nissen in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nissen.
- Where is Nissen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nissen is densest in Denmark — about 1 in 645 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nissen?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 9,098 people named Nissen, about 1 in 645 residents.
- How common is Nissen compared with other names?
- In Denmark, Nissen is the 51st most common surname of 88,366 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nissen?
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/nissenThe 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, “Nissen” — the 51st most common surname in Denmark. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.