Orson
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Literary/English name, often linked to bear imagery via Latin ursus
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ɔɹsən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Orson is a given name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in the United States.
- USUnited States
- AUAustralia
- PHPhilippines
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Literary/English name, often linked to bear imagery via Latin ursus.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Orson is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Du latin ursus « ours »; forme apparentée à l’ours.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Little bear.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Como un oso
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Orson Hydeb. 1805USAmerican Mormon leader (1805-1878)
- Orson Prattb. 1811USApostle of the LDS Church (1811–1881)
- Orson Desaix Munnb. 1824USAmerican publisher (1824–1907)
- Orson Desaix Munn IIb. 1883USAmerican editor and publisher (1883-1958)
- Richard Lockridgeb. 1898USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (1898–1982)
- Orson Wellesb. 1915USAmerican actor and filmmaker (1915–1985)
- Orson Beanb. 1928USAmerican actor (1928–2020)
- Orson K. Miller Jr.b. 1930USAmerican botanist (1930-2006)
- Orson Scott Cardb. 1951USAmerican science fiction novelist (born 1951)
- Orson Charlesb. 1991USCollege football player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 51 sources across 28 countries.
Reference works 3
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Orson mean, and where does it come from?
- Literary/English name, often linked to bear imagery via Latin ursus. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- Is Orson a male or female name?
- Orson is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Orson?
- A machine transcription gives /ɔɹsən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Orson have the most bearers?
- Orson is most frequently recorded in the United States.
What do you want to know about Orson?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/orsonThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Orson”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.