Oscar
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the male personal name Oscar, of Gaelic origin, literally ‘deer-friend’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/oskar/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Oscar is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 102(inferred from the name graph)
- PYParaguay≈1 in 154
- ARArgentina≈1 in 167
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Oscar itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (inferred from the name graph)
- #158 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 516 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 102 (inferred from the name graph)
≈270,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Аскар in FI Finland.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the male personal name Oscar, of Gaelic origin, literally ‘deer-friend’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Oscar counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #15 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 167 | 664 | Oscar | 162 |
| CO Colombia | #36 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 204 | 282 | Oscar | 223 |
| US United States | #280 | 212,946 | 1 in 1.6K | 213K | Oscar | 516 |
| ES Spain | #33 | 123,663 | 1 in 404 | 124K | Oscar | 265 |
| PE Peru | #45 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 265 | 101K | Oscar | 150 |
| SV El Salvador | #25 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 102 | 308 | Oscar | 107 |
| PY Paraguay | #24 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 154 | — | Oscar | 91 |
| FI Finland | #850 | 38,507as Oskari | 1 in 145 | 50K | Аскар | 49 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); RENIEC — DNI population names; the co-datosgov-candidates register; This page discusses the popularity of names in Sonsonate, El Salvador, and Puno, Peru in the 1980s, published by Maybe i; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
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)
Oscar is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Legendary hero, grandson of Finn MacCool; possibly from Irish oscar 'champion warrior' or 'jewel'.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, A male given name from Irish or Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, Dall’inglese Oscar, dal gaelico antico; introdotto in Italia dal Cesariotti e reso popolare da Verdi. Equiparato ad Anscario.
as a nameDizionario Dei Nomi e Cognomi Italiani
In French, D’origine germanique; peut signifier « lance des dieux » ou « cerf ami ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Origine germanique, « lance d’Ans »; lié au dieu teutonique Ans.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Oscar Wildeb. 1854IEIrish poet, playwright, and aesthete (1854-1900)
- Óscar Carmonab. 1869PT11th Portuguese president (1926-1951)
- Gustaf VI Adolfb. 1882SEnot in their usual nameKing of Sweden (1950–1973); anthropologist, art historian, collector and archaeologist
- Óscar Arnulfo Romerob. 1917SVfourth archbishop of San Salvador (1917–1980)
- Oscar Luigi Scalfarob. 1918IT9th President of Italy (1918–2012)
- Óscar Ariasb. 1941CRPresident of Costa Rica (1986–1990, 2006–2010)
- Nicanor Duarteb. 1956PYnot in their usual name46.° President of Paraguay
- Rey Mysterio Jrb. 1974USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler
- Oscar Pistoriusb. 1986ZASouth African sprinter and convicted murderer (born 1986)
- Oscarb. 1991BRBrazilian association football player (born 1991)
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 144 sources across 72 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 213K | #263 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 124K | #67 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 123K | #37 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 5K | #304 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 4.3K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.6K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 443 | #263 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 296 | #400 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 282 | #12 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Oscar mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name Oscar, of Gaelic origin, literally ‘deer-friend’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Oscar have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 273 thousand people named Oscar in Argentina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled oscar.
- Is Oscar a male or female name?
- Oscar 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.
- What are other forms of the name Oscar?
- In the etymology graph, Oskar, Ansgar and Oskars are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Oscar?
- A machine transcription gives /oskar/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Oscar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 212,946 people named Oscar in 2020, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Oscar compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Oscar is the 15th most common given name of 119,825 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Oscar?
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/oscarThe 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, “Oscar” — the 15th most common given name in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.