Lars
Lars reached its high-water mark in 2000 at number 1,096, and has been recorded 7,035 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,886th. About 6,000 Larses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Lars
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,035
- Estimated living today
- 6,000
- Median age today
- 32
- Peak year
- 2000
- Best rank
- 1,096th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,886th
- First recorded
- 1883
How old the living Larses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,035 babies given the name since 1883, about 6,000 are alive — 86 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 520 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
from Latin Laurentius.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Larss
- Lars von Trier (born 1956)Danish film director and screenwriter
- Lars Ulrich (born 1963)Danish musician
- Lars Onsager (1903–1976)American physical chemist and theoretical physicist
- Lars Løkke Rasmussen (born 1964)25th Prime Minister of Denmark
- Lars Bender (born 1989)German footballer
- Lars Peter Hansen (born 1952)American economist
- Lars Ahlfors (1907–1996)Finnish mathematician
- Lars Stindl (born 1988)German association football player
People named Lars with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lars is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lars is most concentrated in Washington (6.3×), Minnesota (6.0×), California (3.3×), Utah (2.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2000
The most popular boys’ names the year Lars peaked:
Lars elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Lars | 30,384 | 5th |
| Belgium boys | Lars | 6,239 | 17th |
| Switzerland boys | Lars | 3,384 | 27th |
| Denmark boys | Lars | 1,565 | 22nd |
| England and Wales boys | Lars | 372 | 1,236th |
| France boys | Lars | 160 | 4,837th |
| Poland boys | Lars | 57 birth registrations | 304th |
| Scotland boys | Lars | 7 | 588th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Lars: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Lars | 3,324 | 0.267% | 19th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Lars | 37 | 0.009% | 232nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Lars | 16 | 0.025% | 103rd |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Lars | 7 | 0.188% | 7th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Lars is most concentrated in Nidwalden, where 0.43% of children were given it – 38 of them.
Lars: rank by region
In 2025, Lars was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lars | 64 | 79 |
In 2024, Lars was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | Lars | 252 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lars appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (43rd), Province of East Flanders (44th), Province of Antwerp (72nd), Province of Flemish Brabant (77th) and Province of West Flanders (95th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Lars by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 59 | 233rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Lars among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Lars | 21,351 | 22,801 |
| Finland boys | Lars | 3,040 | 5,032 |
| the Netherlands girls | Lars | — | 16 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Lars lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 305 men called Lars were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Lars | 30 | 0.048 | 1,223 |
| Málaga | Lars | 38 | 0.043 | 1,212 |
| Barcelona | Lars | 85 | 0.029 | 1,730 |
| Palmas, Las | Lars | 16 | 0.028 | 2,585 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Lars | 14 | 0.026 | 2,686 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Lars | 26 | 0.026 | 2,218 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Lars against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.