Osa
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: female equivalent of oso (“bear”): she-bear, sow, female bear
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/osa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Osa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 31K(measured from records)
- NONorway1 in 14K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 56K
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.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 116 (measured from records)
- 1 in 14K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,900 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Norway
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
female equivalent of oso (“bear”): she-bear, sow, female bear
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Osa is read(measured from records)
Osa is one spelling over 3 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.
- Spanish45%
female equivalent of oso (“bear”): she-bear, sow, female bear
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English26%
Initialism of obstructive sleep apnea.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Arabic5.6%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Osa in Arabic.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Osa 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.
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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)
Osa 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 lua, to do, accomplish, act, commit, effect, form, shape, make, perform, prepare, produce, construct.
as a wordGrammar and Dictionary of the Buluba-Lulua Language
In Latvian, handle (part of a cup which is held in the hand when used or moved)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-2 & ISO 639-3 language code for Osage.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, third-person singular past historic of oser
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Lars Osab. 1860NOpainter (1860-1958)
- Hermine Bernhoft Osab. 1865NONorwegian writer
- Sigbjørn Bernhoft Osab. 1910NONorwegian musician (1910–1990)
- Eusebio Osa Unamunob. 1936ESSpanish writer
- Liv Bernhoft Osab. 1957NONorwegian actress
- Shizue Osab. 1962JPJapanese historian (1962–)
- Aitor Osab. 1973ESroad bicycle racer
- Javier Balboab. 1985ESnot in their usual nameEquatorial Guinean association football player
- Hideyuki OsaJPJapanese judge
- Eitaro OsaJPJapanese television 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 41 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 1.6K | #2,893 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 1.6K | #2,893 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 390 | #3,729 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2019 | 204 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2018 | 204 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2020 | 202 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 91 | #13,728 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 27 | — |
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 Osa mean, and where does it come from?
- female equivalent of oso (“bear”): she-bear, sow, female bear Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Osa?
- A machine transcription gives /osa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Osa have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.9 thousand people named Osa in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled osa.
- Where is Osa most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Osa is densest in Norway — about 1 in 14 thousand people — even though Nigeria holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Osa?
- In Spain, the national register counted 1,619 people named Osa, about 1 in 31 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Osa?
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/osaThe 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, “Osa”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.