Rissanen

Rissanen is a Finnish-language surname. It is typically a habitational or patronymic name formed with the common Finnish suffix -nen, which often denotes origin from a place or lineage. The name is most prevalent in Finland and among Finnish communities abroad, including in Sweden and North America, due to migration and diaspora patterns.

Notable individuals with the surname include Jorma Rissanen, a Finnish statistician and information theorist who introduced the minimum description length (MDL) principle, a formal framework for model selection and data compression that has influenced statistics, machine learning, and data analysis.

Beyond Jorma, the name Rissanen is carried by others in Finnish academia, business, and public life, reflecting its roots in Finnish society and its spread through international networks of Finnish emigrants and descendants.