The history of your name

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

'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.

Meaning of PETERSEN in historical publications

Sorry, we don't have any information on the meaning of PETERSEN.

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.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for PETERSEN

The following words are slight variants of PETERSEN that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.