Osterman
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Toponymic surname from eastern place/dwelling names; from Osterwic(h), Osterrod(e), Osten, Ostendorf, Osterwold and related eastern settlement names
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɑstɝmən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Osterman is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 102K(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 3K
- SISlovenia1 in 7.4K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 310 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈6,700 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Toponymic surname from eastern place/dwelling names; from Osterwic(h), Osterrod(e), Osten, Ostendorf, Osterwold and related eastern settlement names.
Sources 1
- Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Osterman 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈6,700 est. | ≈1 in 208K | — | Osterman | 2 |
| US United States | 3,256 | 1 in 102K | 3.3K | Osterman | 310 |
| FI Finland | 1,867 | 1 in 3K | 1.9K | Osterman | 9 |
| SE Sweden | 1,270 | 1 in 8K | 1.3K | Osterman | 27 |
| DZ Algeria | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 78K | — | Osterman | 1 |
| SI Slovenia | 286 | 1 in 7.4K | 286 | — | 4 |
| HR Croatia | 78 | 1 in 54K | 78 | — | — |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form). 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)
Osterman is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Toponymic surname from ost + man; bearers: Niederlande 12+114, Belgien 4+9, Luxemburg 0+1.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte
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)
- Andrey Ostermanb. 1686RURussian noble (1687-1747)
- Marfa Ostermanb. 16981698-1781
- Fedor Ostermanb. 1723RU1723-1804
- Ivan Ostermanb. 1725RURussian politician, diplomat and military personnel (1725-1811)
- Kathryn Ostermanb. 1883USAmerican actress
- Kathy Ostermanb. 1943USAmerican politician
- Andrej Ostermanb. 1960SISlovene officer
- Harry Ostermanb. 1967USAmerican politician
- Matt Ostermanb. 1978USAmerican film director, producer and screenwriter
- Cat Ostermanb. 1983USsoftball 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 3.3K | #9,149 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 3.3K | #9,919 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.9K | #10,451 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 286 | #1,374 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 78 | #9,630 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost prezimena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 72 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname 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
- What does the name Osterman mean, and where does it come from?
- Toponymic surname from eastern place/dwelling names; from Osterwic(h), Osterrod(e), Osten, Ostendorf, Osterwold and related eastern settlement names. Recorded by Deutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 4: Familiennamen nach Herkunft und Wohnstätte.
- How do you pronounce Osterman?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɑstɝmən/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Osterman have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 6.7 thousand people named Osterman in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled osterman.
- Where is Osterman most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Osterman is densest in Finland — about 1 in 3.0 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Osterman?
- In the United States, the national register counted 3,256 people named Osterman in 2010, about 1 in 102 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Osterman?
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/ostermanThe 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, “Osterman”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.