Osvald
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Osvald är ett nordiskt namn, motsvarande fornvästnordiskt Osvaldr, sidoform till Ásvaldr, sammansatt av förleden As-, urnordiskt *ansur ’hednisk gud’ och → -vald
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries
/osbald/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Osvald is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- FIFinland1 in 7.9K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 9.3K
- SESweden1 in 17K
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 Osvald 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 76 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.9K (inferred from the name graph)
2,810 named Oswald, 2020
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)Locally spelled Освальд in FI Finland and Osval'D in LV Latvia.
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)Osvald är ett nordiskt namn, motsvarande fornvästnordiskt Osvaldr, sidoform till Ásvaldr, sammansatt av förleden As-, urnordiskt *ansur ’hednisk gud’ och → -vald. Det kan också vara ett tidigt lån från den engelska formen av Osvaldr, fornengelskans Osweald. I den rikssvenska almanackan 3 oktober och i den finlandssvenska 11 januari.
Cited for this meaning 1
- Förnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Osvald 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 2,810as Oswald | 1 in 118K | 14K | Osvald | 62 |
| FI Finland | — | 704 | 1 in 7.9K | 2.9K | Освальд | 3 |
| DK Denmark | — | 633 | 1 in 9.3K | 633 | Osvald | 30 |
| SE Sweden | — | 605 | 1 in 17K | 605 | Osvald | 17 |
| GY Guyana | — | 435as Oswald | 1 in 1.7K | 435 | — | — |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈36 est. | ≈1 in 34K | 7 | Osvald | 12 |
| LV Latvia | #484 | 1 | 1 in 1.9M | 1 | Osval'D | 3 |
2,810 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020, counting the spelling oswald. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)Osvald is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Origine germanique; signifie « gouverneur de l’Est ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Du germanique ans « dieu » + walt « gouverner ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)- Osvald Sirénb. 1879SESwedish art historian (1879–1966)
- Osvald Almqvistb. 1884SEarchitect (1884–1950)
- Osvald Mobergb. 1888SEgymnast (1888-1933)
- Osvald Chlubnab. 1893CZCzech music educator and composer (1893–1971)
- Osvald Käppb. 1905EEEstonian wrestler (1905–1995)
- Aaro Pärnb. 1910EEnot in their usual nameEstonian opera singer (1910-1990)
- Osvald Toomingb. 1914EEEstonian journalist, writer, and playwright (1914–1992)
- Ossi Runneb. 1927FInot in their usual nameFinnish trumpeter, conductor, composer and record producer (1927–2020)
- Osvald Johanssonb. 1932SESwedish cyclist (1932-1975)
- Osvald Zahradníkb. 1932SKSlovak dramatic and writer (1932–2017)
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)49 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 8 | #45,608 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Is Osvald a male or female name?
- Osvald is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: Finland (DVV), Denmark (Danmarks Statistik), Norway (SSB) and Brazil (Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)).
- How do you pronounce Osvald?
- A machine transcription gives /osbald/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Osvald mean?
- Recorded meaning: Osvald är ett nordiskt namn, motsvarande fornvästnordiskt Osvaldr, sidoform till Ásvaldr, sammansatt av förleden As-, urnordiskt *ansur ’hednisk gud’ och → -vald.
- In which country does Osvald have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 2.8 thousand people named Oswald, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Osvald most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Osvald is densest in Finland — about 1 in 7.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Osvald?
- In Finland, the national register counted 704 people named Osvald, about 1 in 7.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Osvald compared with other names?
- In Latvia, Osvald is the 484th most common given name of 11,601 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Osvald?
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/osvaldThe 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, “Osvald” — the 484th most common given name in Latvia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.