Larsen surname meaning

Larsen is a Danish, Norwegian, and North German patronymic surname meaning “son of Lars.” Lars is the Scandinavian form of Laurentius, a personal name associated with Laurentum and, by later interpretation, the laurel. In older Denmark and Norway, -sen names often identified a person through the father’s given name rather than a permanently inherited family name; later records made Larsen hereditary. Larson is a common American spelling, while Laurson and related forms can appear in immigrant documents. The catalog uses parent’s name with high confidence because the surname’s grammatical formation is transparent, even though separate families could descend from different men named Lars.