Oleg
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Russian: ancient Scandanavian name
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/owlɛɡ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Oleg is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 5th most common given name.
- MDMoldova1 in 110(measured from records)
- RURussia≈1 in 45as Алексей
- UAUkraine≈1 in 94as Олег
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 Oleg 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.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #11 (measured from records)
- 8 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 667 (measured from records)
- 1 in 110 (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,200,000 named Алексей, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Moldova
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Алексей in RU Russia, BY Belarus, CN China and 1 more, Alex in US United States, BR Brazil, Олексій in UA Ukraine and Alexei in MD Moldova.
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)
Slavic name, from Old Norse Helgi 'holy, blessed'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Oleg is read(measured from records)
Oleg is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Russian52%
ancient Scandanavian name.
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
- English16%
A male given name from the Slavic languages.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Oleg 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #5 | ≈3,200,000 est. | ≈1 in 45 | #5 | Алексей | 291 |
| CN China | — | ≈930,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Алексей | 119 |
| UA Ukraine | #15 | ≈470,000 est. | ≈1 in 94 | listed | Олексій | 156 |
| US United States | #162 | 373,467as Alex | 1 in 891 | 351K | Alex | 667 |
| BR Brazil | #97 | 294,567as Alex | 1 in 719 | 312K | Alex | 242 |
| BY Belarus | #7 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 95 | 29 | Алексей | 76 |
| FI Finland | #8 | 40,989as Aleksi | 1 in 136 | 46K | Алексей | 124 |
| MD Moldova | #10 | 30,694 | 1 in 110 | 31K | Alexei | 65 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); e-services.md — living population register. 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)
Oleg is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Slavic name, from Old Norse Helgi 'holy, blessed'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Russian name, from Russian; meaning “happy”.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
From Old Norse Helgi ‘prosperous’. This was the name of a Scandinavian leader who established the city of Kiev.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Swedish, Se Helge.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Oleg the Wiseb. 845SEprince of Kiev
- Oleg Antonovb. 1906RUSoviet aeroplane designer (1906-1984)
- Oleg Cassinib. 1913FRAmerican fashion designer (1913–2006)
- Oleg Yefremovb. 1927RUSoviet and Russian actor and theatre director (1927–2000)
- Oleg Tabakovb. 1935RUSoviet and Russian actor and theatre director (1935–2018)
- Oleg Yankovskyb. 1944RUSoviet and Russian actor (1944-2009)
- Oleg Gazmanovb. 1951RURussian singer (1951)
- Oleg Blokhinb. 1952UAUkrainian footballer, coach, and politician
- Oleg Salenkob. 1969RURussian-Ukrainian footballer (born 1969)
- Oleg Sentsovb. 1976UAUkrainian filmmaker and activist (born 1976)
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 76 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MD Moldova | e-services.md — living population register | — | 31K | #36 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 7.8K | #2,921 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 2.3K | #492 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 337 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 36 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 36 | #83,466 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 26 | #2,921 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 9 | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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
- Where does the name Oleg come from?
- Slavic name, from Old Norse Helgi 'holy, blessed'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- What does the name Oleg mean?
- In Russian, ancient Scandanavian name.
- Is Oleg a male or female name?
- Oleg 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 Oleg?
- A machine transcription gives /owlɛɡ/ (IPA) for Russian.
- What are other forms of the name Oleg?
- In the etymology graph, Helge and Oļegs are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Oleg have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.2 million people named Алексей in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Oleg most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Oleg is densest in Moldova — about 1 in 110 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Oleg?
- In Moldova, the national register counted 30,694 people named Oleg, about 1 in 110 residents.
- How common is Oleg compared with other names?
- In Russia, Oleg is the 5th most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Oleg?
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/olegThe 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, “Oleg” — the 5th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.