Gundersen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: patronymic from an Old Norse personal name, Gunnarr, a compound of gunn ‘battle’ -I- arr ‘warrior’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡəndɝsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gundersen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country, where it is the 29th most common surname.
- NONorway1 in 284(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 5.9K
- USUnited States1 in 182K
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.
- Norway (measured from records)
- Sources
- 185 (measured from records)
- 1 in 284 (inferred from the name graph)
19,260 people
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
patronymic from an Old Norse personal name, Gunnarr, a compound of gunn ‘battle’ -I- arr ‘warrior’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gundersen 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 | #29 | 19,260 | 1 in 284 | 19K | Gundersen | 118 |
| CN China | — | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 342K | — | Gundersen | 2 |
| US United States | — | 1,831 | 1 in 182K | 2.4K | Gundersen | 185 |
| DK Denmark | #456 | 991 | 1 in 5.9K | 991 | Gundersen | 68 |
| GH Ghana | — | ≈810 est. | ≈1 in 36K | — | Gundersen | 4 |
| TN Tunisia | — | ≈290 est. | ≈1 in 40K | — | Gundersen | 1 |
| SE Sweden | — | 257 | 1 in 40K | 257 | Gundersen | 26 |
19,260 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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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)
Gundersen 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.
In Danish, a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Laura Gundersenb. 1832NONorwegian actress (1832-1898)
- Bertrand Gundersenb. 1854NONorwegian politician
- Einar Gundersenb. 1896NONorwegian footballer (1896-1962)
- Oscar Christian Gundersenb. 1908NONorwegian diplomat (1908–1991)
- Gunder Gundersenb. 1930NONorwegian Nordic combined skier (1930–2005)
- Jon Gundersenb. 1945USUnited States Ambassador to Ukraine
- Mia Gundersenb. 1961NONorwegian singer and actor
- Christopher Gundersenb. 1983NONorwegian yacht racer
- El Rubiusb. 1990ESnot in their usual nameSpanish-Norwegian YouTuber and streamer
- Jostein Gundersenb. 1996NOassociation 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 22 sources across 11 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Gundersen mean, and where does it come from?
- patronymic from an Old Norse personal name, Gunnarr, a compound of gunn ‘battle’ -I- arr ‘warrior’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gundersen?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡəndɝsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Gundersen have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 19 thousand people named Gundersen, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gundersen.
- Where is Gundersen most common?
- Gundersen is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 284 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Gundersen?
- In Norway, the national register counted 19,260 people named Gundersen, about 1 in 284 residents.
- How common is Gundersen compared with other names?
- In Norway, Gundersen is the 29th most common surname of 90,139 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gundersen?
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/gundersenThe 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, “Gundersen” — the 29th most common surname in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.