Roald

given name · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Roald is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Norway than in any other country. Recorded meaning: a male given name from Old Norse.

rarermore common
  • NONorway1 in 2.2K(measured from records)
  • NLNetherlands1 in 14K
  • DKDenmark1 in 26K

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.

Norway (measured from records)

2,463 people, 2025

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
68 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 2.2K (inferred from the name graph)

Norway

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

RoaldLatin(measured from records)
РоальдCyrillic(measured from records)

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)

a male given name from Old Norse

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Roald 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 Roald is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NO Norway2,4631 in 2.2K8.3KRoald6
NL Netherlands1,2151 in 14K1.2KRoald3
US United States3301 in 1M328—4
DK Denmark2251 in 26K225——
SE Sweden1671 in 61K167—1
AL Albania231 in 134K23——

2,463 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); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-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 recorded senses(measured from records)

Roald is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Norwegian: from an Old Norse personal name composed of the elements hrðdr fame + valdr ruler.

    as a word

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)

186018801900192019401960Roald Amundsen, b. 1872Roald Larsen, b. 1898Roald Amundsen, b. 1913Roald Dahl, b. 1916Roald Aas, b. 1928Roald Sagdeev, b. 1932Roald Hoffmann, b. 1937Roald Øyen, b. 1940Roald Jensen, b. 1943Roald Poulsen, b. 1950
  • Roald Amundsenb. 1872NONorwegian explorer; first person to reach the South Pole (1872–1928)
  • Roald Larsenb. 1898NONorwegian speed skater (1898–1959)
  • Roald Amundsenb. 1913NONorwegian footballer (1913-1985)
  • Roald Dahlb. 1916GBBritish writer and poet (1916–1990)
  • Roald Aasb. 1928NONorwegian speed skater and road and track cyclist (1928–2012)
  • Roald Sagdeevb. 1932RURussian physicist (born 1932)
  • Roald Hoffmannb. 1937USPolish-American Nobel laureate chemist and playwright
  • Roald Øyenb. 1940NONorwegian TV Host and TV-producer
  • Roald Jensenb. 1943NONorwegian footballer (1943–1987)
  • Roald Poulsenb. 1950DKDanish football manager (1950–2024)

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 41 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Roald
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—1.3K#784
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2024667—
NO NorwaySSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891)2025663—
DK DenmarkDanmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)—4#71,410
US United Stateswru 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

What does the name Roald mean, and where does it come from?
a male given name from Old Norse Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
Is Roald a male or female name?
Roald 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.
In which country does Roald have the most bearers?
In Norway, the national register counted about 2.5 thousand people named Roald, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled roald.
Where is Roald most common?
Roald is densest in Norway, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.2 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Roald?
In Norway, the national register counted 2,463 people named Roald in 2025, about 1 in 2.2 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Roald?

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

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, “Roald”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Roald parses inside a full name →