Jostein
given name · Latin script
Meaning: aus dem Norwegischen stammender männl
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Jostein is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country.
- NONorway1 in 981(measured from records)
- GHGhana≈1 in 33K
- SESweden1 in 186K
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.
- Norway (measured from records)
- Sources
- 110 (measured from records)
- 1 in 981 (inferred from the name graph)
5,574 people, 2025
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
aus dem Norwegischen stammender männl. Vom. (zu altnord, jor »Ross, Hengst« + steinn »Stein«).
Sources 1
- DUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jostein 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | #136 | 5,574 | 1 in 981 | 20K | Jostein | 110 |
| GH Ghana | #782 | ≈880 est. | ≈1 in 33K | — | Jostein | 5 |
| US United States | — | ≈68 est. | ≈1 in 4.9M | 6 | Jostein | 47 |
| SE Sweden | — | 55 | 1 in 186K | 55 | Jostein | 14 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈35 est. | ≈1 in 911K | — | Jostein | 12 |
| DK Denmark | — | 24 | 1 in 245K | 24 | Jostein | 31 |
| IS Iceland | — | 1 | 1 in 351K | 1 | Jostein | 1 |
5,574 people counted by SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891), 2025. 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: SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Jostein Nyhamarb. 1922NONorwegian politician and magazine editor
- Jostein Nerbøvikb. 1938NONorwegian historian
- Jostein Gaarderb. 1952NONorwegian author (born 1952)
- Jostein Gripsrudb. 1952NONorwegian social scientist
- Jostein Wilmannb. 1953NONorwegian racing cyclist
- Jostein Flob. 1964NONorwegian association football player
- Jostein Stordahlb. 1966NONorwegian yacht racer and wheelchair curler
- Jostein Grindhaugb. 1973NONorwegian footballer and manager (born 1973)
- Jostein Hasselgårdb. 1979NONorwegian musician
- Jostein Gundersenb. 1996NOassociation 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 21 sources across 13 countries.
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
- Is Jostein a male or female name?
- Jostein 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 does the name Jostein mean?
- Recorded meaning: aus dem Norwegischen stammender männl.
- In which country does Jostein have the most bearers?
- In Norway, the national register counted about 5.6 thousand people named Jostein, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jostein.
- Where is Jostein most common?
- Jostein is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 981 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Jostein?
- In Norway, the national register counted 5,574 people named Jostein in 2025, about 1 in 981 residents.
- How common is Jostein compared with other names?
- In Norway, Jostein is the 136th most common given name of 25,788 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jostein?
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/josteinThe 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, “Jostein” — the 136th most common given name in Norway. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.