The PETERSEN surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
	Total	Rank	Frequency %	Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot)	55,185	543	0.02	205
United States (1880 census)	3,914	1566	0.008	78
Change since 1880	+51271	+1023	+0.012	+127
Other Countries
Australia	3,541	419	0.022	217
United Kingdom	0			0

Top States for PETERSEN by Total
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
California	6,613	447	0.020	195
Minnesota	4,247	57	0.086	863
Iowa	4,055	26	0.139	1,386
Utah	3,020	44	0.135	1,352
Washington	2,904	184	0.049	493
Top States for PETERSEN by Frequency
State	Total	Rank in State	Frequency %	Per million people
Iowa	4,055	26	0.139	1,386
Utah	3,020	44	0.135	1,352
Nebraska	2,258	24	0.132	1,319
South Dakota	735	40	0.097	974
Minnesota	4,247	57	0.086	863

Notes

Total is the total number of people with that surname.
Rank is the position in the list of names ordered by total (eg, a rank of 1 means that it's the most common name, and a rank of 10 means it's the tenth most common, etc).
Frequency is the percentage of people with that surname.
Per million people is the number of people with that surname per million of the population.

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called PETERSEN live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called PETERSEN represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called PETERSEN in California than any other state, but you are more likely to find a PETERSEN by picking someone at random in Iowa than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of PETERSEN

Region of origin: Europe

Country of origin: Denmark

Language of origin: Danish

Ethnic origin: Scandinavian

Religious origin: Christian

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the PETERSEN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the PETERSEN surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of PETERSEN in the USA

Classification	Total	Percent
White (Hispanic)	883	1.6
Black/African American	629	1.14
Mixed Race	607	1.1
Asian/Pacific	342	0.62
Native American/Alaskan	215	0.39
White (Caucasian)	52,509	95.15

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the PETERSEN surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Similar names to PETERSEN

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as PETERSEN.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.