Sten
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Swedish: a rock, a stone
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ste:n/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sten is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country.
- SESweden1 in 495(measured from records)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 1.1K
- DKDenmark1 in 3.3K
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)
- Sources
- 125 (measured from records)
- 1 in 495 (inferred from the name graph)
20,630 people
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
alternative form of stein (“stone”), officially recognized in the following senses:
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
How Sten is read(measured from records)
Sten is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Swedish25%
a rock, a stone
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Sten är ett nordiskt namn, identiskt med ordet sten. Namnet är vanligt som förstaled i dubbelnamn, t.ex. Sten-Åke. I den rikssvenska almanackan 14 december, till minne av riksföreståndaren Sten Stures (d.ä.) dödsdag år 1503. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 28 november.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
- English18%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sten in English.
- Danish17%
stone
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- German7.9%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Sten in German.
- Norwegian7.2%
alternative form of stein (“stone”), officially recognized in the following senses:
as a wordrecorded as Norwegian Bokmålkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
a male given name from Old Norse
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Sten 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 | #273 | 20,630 | 1 in 495 | 21K | Sten | 104 |
| DK Denmark | #266 | 1,799 | 1 in 3.3K | 1.8K | Sten | 105 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 1,703 | 1 in 10K | 1.7K | Sten | 24 |
| NO Norway | #504 | 1,457 | 1 in 3.8K | 3.5K | Sten | 68 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 68K | listed | — | — |
| EE Estonia | #148 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | listed | Sten | 59 |
| FI Finland | — | 550 | 1 in 10K | 1.5K | Sten | 19 |
20,630 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); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); the dfa-band-1 register. 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)
Sten 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 Italian, forma reduzida de Steno
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes 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)
- Sten Sture the Elderb. 1440SESwedish statesman and military figure (1440-1503)
- Sten Sture the Youngerb. 1493SERegent of Sweden (1493-1520)
- Sten Konowb. 1867NONorwegian indologist and philologist (1867–1948)
- Sten Bergmanb. 1895SESwedish biologist, zoologist and explorer
- Sten Suviob. 1911FIboxer (1911–1988)
- Sten-Åke Cederhökb. 1913SESwedish actor and comedian (1913-1990)
- Olof Johanssonb. 1937SEnot in their usual nameSwedish politician (1937-)
- Sten Ljunggrenb. 1938SESwedish actor
- Sten Grytebustb. 1989NONorwegian association football player
- Anton Källbergb. 1997SEnot in their usual nameSwedish table tennis 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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 47 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 1.4K | #1,409 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 526 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 384 | #3,801 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 172 | #3,027 |
| DE Germany | Deutscher Familiennamenatlas Band 1 | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Sten come from?
- alternative form of stein (“stone”), officially recognized in the following senses: Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What does the name Sten mean?
- In Swedish, a rock, a stone
- What are other forms of the name Sten?
- In the etymology graph, Torsten, Östen and Steinn are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Sten?
- A machine transcription gives /ste:n/ (IPA) for Swedish.
- Is Sten a male or female name?
- Sten is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Sten have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 21 thousand people named Sten, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sten.
- Where is Sten most common?
- Sten is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 495 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Sten?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 20,630 people named Sten, about 1 in 495 residents.
- How common is Sten compared with other names?
- In Sweden, Sten is the 273rd most common given name of 45,482 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sten?
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/stenThe 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, “Sten” — the 273rd most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.