Oyama
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Oyama is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Japanese 小山 (Oyama), 尾山 (Oyama) or 大山 (Ōyama).
- JPJapan≈1 in 3.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 346K
- NGNigeria≈1 in 29K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 122 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)
≈37,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Borrowed from Japanese 小山 (Oyama), 尾山 (Oyama) or 大山 (Ōyama).
Sources 1
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Oyama 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #724 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Oyama | 122 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈7,400 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Oyama | 15 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 191K | 121 | — | — |
| US United States | — | 962 | 1 in 346K | 1K | Oyama | 107 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | — | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 474K | 1 | — | — |
| CA Canada | — | ≈130 est. | ≈1 in 292K | — | Oyama | 15 |
| PE Peru | — | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 266K | — | Oyama | 13 |
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 — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
- Ōyama Iwaob. 1842JPJapanese general (1842-1916)
- Ōyama Sutematsub. 1860JPJapanese socialite, first Japanese female college student studied in the US, advocate of education for licensed medical nurse and higher education for girls in 1900s Japan
- Ikuo Oyamab. 1880JPJapanese political scientist (1880–1955)
- Masutatsu Ōyamab. 1923JPKorean-Japanese full-contact karate master, the founder of Kyokushin (1922-1994)
- Ōyama Nobuyob. 1933JPJapanese voice actress (1933–2024)
- Shigeru Ōyamab. 1936JPJapanese full-contact karate master, the founder of World Oyama Karate Organization (1936-2016)
- Naohiro Oyamab. 1974JPJapanese association football player
- Takanori Ōyamab. 1974JPJapanese actor, voice actor and playwright
- Kana Oyamab. 1984JPJapanese volleyball player
- Keisuke Oyamab. 1995JPJapanese association 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.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1K | #22,891 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 972 | #9,515 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 962 | #25,640 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 927 | #27,535 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #399 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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 Oyama mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Japanese 小山 (Oyama), 尾山 (Oyama) or 大山 (Ōyama). Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Oyama have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 37 thousand people named Oyama in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled oyama.
- How common is the name Oyama?
- In the United States, the national register counted 962 people named Oyama in 2010, about 1 in 346 thousand residents.
- How common is Oyama compared with other names?
- In Japan, Oyama is the 724th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Oyama?
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/oyamaThe same 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), 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, “Oyama” — the 724th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.