Jensen
A masculine Scandinavian name meaning "warrior" or "fighter".
Name Census estimates that about 18,745 living Americans carry the first name Jensen. It sits at #327 in the overall ranking, outside the top 50 but still well-represented. It appears on both sides of the gender split, with 85.0% of registrations being male. The average person named Jensen today is around 13 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Jensen births was 2018 (1,272 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Jensen. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Jensen with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Jensen is a relatively new arrival in the SSA data. The average bearer is just 13 years old, meaning it gained most of its traction in the last two decades.
People living today
19K
~ 1 in 18,285 Americans
Peak year
2018
1,272 babies that year
Average age
13
years old
2024 SSA rank
#327
Tracked since 1927
Census
Jensen in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 12,686 people with the first name Jensen, which placed it at #2,118 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#2,118
National first-name rank
People counted
13K
12,686 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
4.2
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
76.2% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Jensen
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jensen is White at 76.2%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (10.0%) and Two or More Races (6.1%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Jensen described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Jensen at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White76.2% · 9,661
- Hispanic or Latino10.0% · 1,272
- Two or more races6.1% · 768
- Asian and Pacific Islander4.8% · 610
- Black or African American2.0% · 251
- American Indian and Alaska Native1.0% · 124
Gender
Gender distribution for Jensen
Jensen leans heavily male at 85.0% of total registrations, but 2,839 girls have also been registered with the name over the years, giving it a small but present crossover presence.
Jensen as a male name
- Ranked #327 in 2024
- 1,054 male births in 2024
- Peak: 2018 (1,196 births)
Jensen as a female name
- Ranked #3,128 in 2024
- 51 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1998 (204 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jensen leans strongly male. 10,223 people counted with this name were male (80.6%), compared with 2,464 female bearers (19.4%).
Popularity
Jensen: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Jensen from the 1920s through to the 2020s, spanning 10 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 2010s, with 8,363 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 2010s peak, Jensen remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Jensen by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Jensen during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Jensens live
The SSA's state-level files cover 48 states and territories. Texas, California, Ohio recorded the most babies named Jensen, while Vermont, Wyoming, Delaware recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 321 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Jensen
The name Jensen is a Scandinavian name with origins tracing back to medieval Denmark and Norway. It derived from the Old Norse name Jenssøn, which means "son of Jens". Jens, in turn, is a form of the name Johannes, the Scandinavian equivalent of John.
The earliest recorded instances of the name Jensen date back to the 13th century in Denmark. It was initially used as a patronymic surname, indicating the father's given name. Over time, Jensen transitioned from being a surname to also being used as a given name in its own right.
One of the earliest known individuals with the name Jensen was Jens Jensen, a Danish chronicler who lived in the late 13th century. He is known for his work Ældste Danske Krønike, which documented the history of Denmark from its mythical origins to the year 1288.
In the 16th century, Jensen Bjelke was a Norwegian nobleman and military leader who played a prominent role in the Swedish-Danish Wars. He served as a commander in the Danish army and was instrumental in several key battles against Swedish forces.
In the realm of literature, Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885) was a Danish novelist and poet who is considered a pioneer of the Naturalist movement in Scandinavian literature. His novel Niels Lyhne is regarded as a seminal work in Danish literature.
In the 20th century, Jens Christian Skou (1918-2018) was a Danish chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997 for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump, a critical mechanism for the transportation of ions across cell membranes.
Another notable figure with the name Jensen was Jens Nygaard (1926-2002), a Norwegian computer scientist who co-designed the influential programming language SIMULA, one of the first object-oriented programming languages. His contributions were pivotal in the development of modern computer programming.
While the name Jensen has its roots in Scandinavia, it has since gained recognition and usage in various parts of the world, particularly in regions with strong Danish or Norwegian cultural influences.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Jensen
People
Jensen + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Jensen as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with J
Other first names starting with J with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Jensen: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Jensen?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 18,745 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Jensen going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 18,285 US residents.
Is Jensen a common name?
We classify Jensen as "Uncommon". It ranks above 98.4% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 18,971 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Jensen most popular?
The single biggest year for Jensen was 2018, when 1,272 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Jensen is about 13 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Jensen in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 12,686 people with the name Jensen, or 4.20 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #2,118 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Jensen in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Jensen?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Jensen leans strongly male. 10,223 people counted with this name were male (80.6%), compared with 2,464 female bearers (19.4%). The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Jensen?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Jensen is White at 76.2%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (10.0%) and Two or More Races (6.1%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Jensen most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Jensen in the 2020 Census, accounting for 76.2% (9,661 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Jensen in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Jensen a male name?
Yes, 85.0% of people registered as Jensen in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Jensen still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Jensen in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Jensen can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many people have Jensen as a first name?
If you just want to know how many Americans are named Jensen, HowManyOfMe.org gives you the headline number in one glance.