Gösta
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Swedish: a male given name, variant of Gustav
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/jœs̪t̪a˥˩/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gösta is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country.
- SESweden1 in 451(measured from records)
- FIFinland1 in 9.7K
- DKDenmark1 in 309K
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 Gösta 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.
- Sweden (measured from records)
- Sources
- 39 (measured from records)
- 1 in 451 (inferred from the name graph)
22,597 people
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Gosta in SE Sweden, FI Finland, NL Netherlands and Goesta in BJ Benin.
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)
a male given name, variant of Gustav
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.
How Gösta is read(measured from records)
Gösta 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.
- Swedish75%
a male given name, variant of Gustav
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Gösta är sedan flera hundra år en svensk talspråklig form av → Gustav. Först på 1850- talet började Gösta bli vanligt som officiellt namn. Några kända namnbärare är politikern Gösta Bohman (1911–97), skådespelaren Gösta Ekman d.y. (1939–2017) och artisten Gösta Linderholm (1941–2020). I både den rikssvenska och finlandssvenska almanackan 6 juni.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
- German14%
['jcesta]: männl.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
Gösta 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.
22,597 people counted by Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population), counting the spelling gösta. 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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Gösta 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.
Swedish: vernacular form of GUSTAV , used in its own right as a baptismal name, but also as a pet form of the learned version.
as a word
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)
- Magnus Gösta Mittag-Lefflerb. 1846SESwedish mathematician (1846–1927)
- Gösta Ekmanb. 1890SESwedish actor (1890–1938)
- Gösta von dem Bussche-Haddenhausenb. 1902DEGerman baroness; mother of Prince Claus of the Netherlands (1902–1996)
- Gösta Stoltzb. 1904SESwedish chess player (1904–1963)
- Gösta Dunkerb. 1905SESwedish footballer and manager (1905-1973)
- Hannes Alfvénb. 1908SEnot in their usual nameSwedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and science fiction author (1908–1995), winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Physics
- Gösta Bredefeldtb. 1935SEactor (1935-2010)
- Gösta Ekmanb. 1939SESwedish actor (1939–2017)
- Björn Granathb. 1946SEnot in their usual nameSwedish actor (1946-2017)
- Peter Grönvallb. 1963SEnot in their usual nameSwedish songwriter, musician, record producer
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 16 sources across 9 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 4 | #60,822 |
Reference works 2
- 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 Gösta mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name, variant of Gustav Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Gösta?
- In the etymology graph, Gustav and Gustaf are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Gösta?
- A machine transcription gives /jœs̪t̪a˥˩/ (IPA) for Swedish.
- Is Gösta a male or female name?
- Gösta 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.
- In which country does Gösta have the most bearers?
- In Sweden, the national register counted about 23 thousand people named Gösta, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gosta.
- Where is Gösta most common?
- Gösta is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 451 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Gösta?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 22,597 people named Gösta, about 1 in 451 residents.
What do you want to know about Gösta?
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/g%C3%B6staThe 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, “Gösta”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.