Torsten

given name · Latin script

Meaning: a male given name from Danish, popular in the 1960s and 1970s

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/tʰɔʁstən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Torsten is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 551(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 349K
  • SESweden1 in 821

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈150,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
265 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 551 (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

TorstenLatin(measured from records)
토르스텐Hangul(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)

a male given name from Danish, popular in the 1960s and 1970s

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Torsten 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.

Where Torsten is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#120≈150,000 est.≈1 in 5512Torsten265
SE Sweden—12,4321 in 82112KTorsten58
CH Switzerland#757≈1,400 est.≈1 in 6K—Torsten59
DK Denmark—1,0261 in 5.7K1K—2
US United States—9531 in 349K950Torsten233
FI Finland—8791 in 6.3K3.1KTorsten15

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: the de-leipzig-vornamen register; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Torsten is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Torstén

  • Russian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, United States

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Торстен, Thorsten, Тхорстен

  • Croatian given name15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, Bulgaria, United States, Switzerland

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian

    Also written Thorsten, Торстен

41 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Torsten 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.

  • In Swedish, Torsten är ett nordiskt namn, sammansatt av → Tor- och -sten ’sten’. Smekformen Totte har bland annat använts till Torsten och andra namn på Tor-, men ges nu även som officiellt namn. Kända namnbärare är skådespelarna Torsten Lilliecrona (1921–99) och Thorsten Flinck (f. 1961). I den rikssvenska almanackan 23 februari och i den finlandssvenska 27 februari.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • Swedish and Danish: from an Old Norse personal name composed of the name of the god Thor ( órr ) + Old Norse steinn stone. Variant: Thorstein(n). Cognate: Norwegian: Torstein .

    as a word

  • In Norwegian Nynorsk, definite singular of torste

    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)

19001920194019601980Torsten Hägerstrand, b. 1916Torsten Wiesel, b. 1924Torsten Voges, b. 1961Torsten Albig, b. 1963Torsten May, b. 1969Torsten Haß, b. 1970Torsten Amft, b. 1971Torsten Lieberknecht, b. 1973Torsten Frings, b. 1976Torsten Jansen, b. 1976

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)

InformalHallo Torsten,Hi Torsten, (English)

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 39 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Torsten
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—12K#334
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)19997.9K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20007.6K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20017.4K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20027.2K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20037K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20046.8K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20056.5K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20066.3K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20076.1K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20085.8K—
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)20095.6K—

Reference works 2

  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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 Torsten mean, and where does it come from?
a male given name from Danish, popular in the 1960s and 1970s Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Torsten?
A machine transcription gives /tʰɔʁstən/ (IPA) for German.
What are other forms of the name Torsten?
In the etymology graph, Thorsten, Thor and Sten are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Torsten have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 146 thousand people named Torsten in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled torsten.
Is Torsten a male or female name?
Torsten 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.
How common is the name Torsten?
In Sweden, the national register counted 12,432 people named Torsten, about 1 in 821 residents.
How common is Torsten compared with other names?
In Germany, Torsten is the 120th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Torsten?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/torsten

The 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, “Torsten” — the 120th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Torsten parses inside a full name →