Ogawa

surname · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Ogawa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Japanese 小川 (Ogawa).

rarermore common
  • BRBrazil1 in 108K(measured from records)
  • USUnited States1 in 176K
  • FIFinland1 in 130K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

1,968 people

Sources
88 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 108K (inferred from the name graph)

Brazil

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Borrowed from Japanese 小川 (Ogawa).

Sources 1

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ogawa 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.

Where Ogawa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil1,9681 in 108K2KOgawa88
US United States1,8871 in 176K2KOgawa77
AR Argentina581 in 784K58Ogawa25
FI Finland431 in 130K43—2
ES Spain311 in 1.6M31Ogawa5
NO Norway181 in 304K18—1
DK Denmark81 in 734K8——

1,968 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ogawa is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Thai surname17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written โอกาวา, โอกาว่า, Okawa, โองาวะ, โอกาวะ

50 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

190019502000Yukawa Hideki, b. 1907Seiji Ogawa, b. 1934Mayumi Ogawa, b. 1939Shinji Ogawa, b. 1941Toshio Ogawa, b. 1948Eriko Yamatani, b. 1950Yoko Ogawa, b. 1962Naoya Ogawa, b. 1968Mana Ogawa, b. 1993Koki Ogawa, b. 1997

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 24 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Ogawa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020002K#13,838
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2K#4,936
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020101.9K#15,508
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.8K#15,694
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—58—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—43#26,092
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—31#62,437
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—31#61,483
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—18#44,789
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—8#49,010
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname 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 Ogawa mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Japanese 小川 (Ogawa). Recorded by Wiktionary.
In which country does Ogawa have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 2.0 thousand people named Ogawa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ogawa.
Where is Ogawa most common?
Ogawa is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 108 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Ogawa?
In Brazil, the national register counted 1,968 people named Ogawa, about 1 in 108 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Ogawa?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ogawa

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Ogawa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ogawa parses inside a full name →