>Are you related to the .....sen family?

Frequently I recieve letters concerning relation to families named: Nielsen, Hansen, Pedersen etc.

There's something you should know:
The ending -sen in a danish family name means "Son of". This implies that Nielsen means "Son of Niels".
Until 1870 most children got their family name from their fathers first name. There is more than 328.000 people named Jensen in Denmark. And the are (in general) not related to one another.
So if you want to know more about your family there's only the hard way:

  • Find your relatives exact names
  • Their place of birth
  • date of birth.
  • Then find their parents names ...etc.
Then one day you might find the connection to Denmark (or Norway), where -sen names are very common.

Take a look at:

FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service http://www.familysearch.org/ and for danish connections: Genealogy Resource Index for Denmark, GRID http://fp.image.dk/fpemartin/ and Danish Data archives http://www.dda.dk/ The most common family names i Denmark:
1996
Efternavn / Family name Total Pr. 1.000
Jensen 328000 62
Nielsen 318000 60
Hansen 270000 51
Pedersen 201000 38
Andersen 180000 34
Christensen 143000 27
Larsen 138000 26
Sørensen 133000 25
Rasmussen 111000 21
Jørgensen 106000 20