Nielsen

In Norse custom a second name was not a family name at all but a statement of parentage: the father's given name plus -sen for a son, -datter for a daughter, remade from scratch with every birth. Niels, the Danish form of the Greek Nikolaos that also gave English its Nicholas, was one of the most heavily worked given names in the country, so Nielsen was minted again and again in parish after parish wherever a Niels had a boy. Where two households needed telling apart, a byname could be added on top, which is how the Dane Thomas Hansen Kingo, son of Hans Thomsen Kingo, ended up carrying three names where his neighbours carried two.

Fixed surnames arrived in Denmark from the top down. In 1526 Frederik I of Denmark-Norway ordered the noble families to take up permanent names, and many of them quarried one out of their own arms: Rosenkrantz from the wreath of roses forming the torse, Gyldenstierne from the seven-pointed gold star on the shield. Farm households kept the old revolving system for three more centuries. Then in 1856 the Danish government outlawed the patronymic practice outright, and whatever a man happened to be called in that year became what his children, and their children, would be called for good.

The freeze caught a startlingly small pool of names. So few patronymics were in circulation that the state had to ease its own regulations again in 1904 simply to give Danes room to tell one another apart. Nielsen came out of that century as the most common surname in Denmark, carried by roughly four people in every hundred, and in use in the Faroe Islands as well. Iceland went the other way, and its law still favours the living patronymic, so a name there is rebuilt at each birth rather than inherited.

Nielsine Nielsen, born in 1850 and dead in 1916, was the first female academic and physician in Denmark. She carried the plainest surname in the country into rooms that had never admitted a woman holding any surname at all. Her near-contemporary Olivia Nielsen (1852-1910) took the same name into organised labour and politics, working as a Danish trade unionist and politician.

Maria Nielsen (1882-1931) followed as a Danish historian and gymnasium headmistress, holding both the scholarship and the running of a school. Marichen Nielsen (1921-2014) was a Danish politician a generation further on. Within three lifetimes the commonest name in Denmark had been carried into medicine, the trade unions, the schools and politics, and in each case by a woman entering a field that had been closed.

Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) is the Danish composer the name is best known for, but he was not working alone under it. Ludolf Nielsen (1876-1939) was a composer, violinist, conductor and pianist in the same Danish generation, holding four musical trades at once. Later the name reached singing through the soprano Inga Nielsen (1946-2008), and jazz through Kai Peter Anthon Nielsen (1906-1988), the Danish musician who worked as Kai Ewans.

On paper and on screen the name did just as well. Kay Nielsen (1886-1957) was a Danish golden age illustrator, and Asta Nielsen, born in 1881 and dead in 1972, worked as a Danish actress across the same decades. The name stayed on screen with two later Danish actresses, Brigitte Nielsen (born 1963) and Connie Nielsen (born 1965).

Danish chess produced a remarkable run of the name. E. Verner Nielsen (1899-1981), Julius Nielsen (1901-1981), Axel Nielsen (1914-2004) and Palle Nielsen (1929-1987) were all Danish chess masters, and Hartvig Nielsen, born in 1908, was a Danish chess player. Four masters and a fifth player, born across thirty years, all answering to the same surname.

The sciences ran in parallel. Holger Bech Nielsen, born in 1941, is a Danish theoretical physicist; Jens Rud Nielsen (1894-1979) was a Danish-American physicist, and Walter M. Nielsen (1900-1981) an American one. Michael Nielsen, born in 1974, is an Australian-American quantum physicist and science writer. Ebbe Nielsen (1950-2001) took the name into entomology as a Danish specialist in insects.

Holger Nielsen (1866-1955) competed at the Olympic Games for Denmark in a range of different sports rather than settling on one. Anders Peter Nielsen (1867-1950) was a Danish shooter of the same era, and Valdemar Nielsen (1879-1954) a Danish Olympic cyclist. The strongest single mark belongs to Gunnar Nielsen (1928-1985), the Danish athlete who held the world record over 1500 metres.

Two Danish sprinters born in the same year, Birthe Nielsen (1926-2010) and Grethe Lovsø Nielsen (1926-2017), ran through the post-war decades. Harald Nielsen (1941-2015) was a Danish footballer, Kurt Nielsen (1930-2011) played tennis, and Frans Nielsen, born in 1984, took the name onto the ice as a Danish ice hockey player.

Nielsen is frequent well outside Denmark because Danes left in numbers, and the name went with them. Anders Christian Nielsen (1848-1929), known as A. C. Nielsen, founded a Danish community at Junction City in Oregon, planting the surname in the American West as a settlement rather than a scattering. Others who reached English-speaking countries sometimes changed the spelling once there, to Neilsen, Neilson, Nelsen, Nielson or Nelson.

The American branch held the name in public life. Alice Nielsen (1872-1943) sang; Arthur Nielsen (1897-1980) worked as a market analyst; Jerri Nielsen (1952-2009) practised as a physician; Norm Nielsen (1934-2020) worked as a magician and businessman. In Canada the name produced a pair of brothers, the film actor Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), Canadian-born and American-based, and Erik Nielsen (1924-2008), who rose to Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.

The scattering went further south and further east. Ana María Nielsen, born in 1951, ran for Argentina, and Gunnar Guillermo Nielsen played football there. In Australia the name belongs to the publisher Juanita Nielsen (1937-1975), the basketball player Matthew Nielsen and the rugby league player Dane Nielsen; in New Zealand to the pianist and teacher Margaret Nielsen (1933-2023). Britain has the athletes Lina Nielsen and Laviai Nielsen, both born in 1996.

One saint's name lies under all three Scandinavian forms, but the borders sorted the spelling: Nilsson in Sweden, Nilsen and Nelsen more usual in Norway, Nielsen the Danish form. Norway kept a real body of Nielsens all the same. Amaldus Nielsen (1838-1932) painted there; Yngvar Nielsen (1843-1916) wrote as a historian; August Nielsen (1877-1956) built as an architect. Earlier still, Nicolai Niels Nielsen (1777-1854) served as a Norwegian priest and politician, and Wilhelm Nielsen (1816-1889) as a Norwegian politician.

The Norwegian name reaches into popular culture and into the war. Otto Nielsen (1909-1982) worked as a songwriter, revue writer, cabaret singer and radio personality; Joachim Nielsen (1964-2000), known as Jokke, as a rock musician and poet; Christopher Nielsen, born in 1963, as a comics artist. Roy Nielsen (1916-1945) served in the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War.

Business and science crossed the same border. Jacob Stolt-Nielsen Jr. (1931-2015) was a Norwegian entrepreneur and Niels G. Stolt-Nielsen, born in 1965, a Norwegian business leader. Signe Torborg Schmidt-Nielsen (1878-1959) worked as a Swedish-Norwegian physicist and nutritionist, and the singer Sanna Nielsen, born in 1984, carried the Danish spelling in Sweden, where Nilsson is the local form.