Öster

Name: Öster: recorded bearers, distribution and rank
Creator: Mondonomo
Published: 2026-10-13
License: https://mondonomo.ai/tos#rights

surname · Latin script

Meaning: east; one of the four major compass points

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 5 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024

/œs̪t̪ɛr/(machine-generated) Swedish · model-generated

Say it in

Öster is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

FIFinland1 in 8.9K(measured from records)
SESweden1 in 9.7K
USUnited States1 in 53K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

: United States (measured from records)
Record sources: 37 (measured from records)
: 1 in 8.9K (inferred from the name graph)

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

Spellings & scripts

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Oster

Locally spelled Oster in US United States.

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

east; one of the four major compass points

Cited for this meaning 1

kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world

Öster 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 Öster is recorded, by country
Country				Most common spelling	Sources
US United States	6,259	1 in 53K	6.3K	Oster	29
SE Sweden	1,055	1 in 9.7K	1.1K	Öster	37
FI Finland	625	1 in 8.9K	625	Öster	9
BR Brazil	286	1 in 740K	286	—	—
CH Switzerland	89	1 in 94K	89	—	—
DK Denmark	76	1 in 77K	76	—	—

6,259 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); 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

Öster is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

English surname9 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland
Languages: English, German, Danish
Also written Oester, Øster
English surname17 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada
Languages: English, German, Arabic
Also written Oster, Oşter
Spanish surname4 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia
Languages: Spanish, Portuguese
Also written Oster
a separate name2 spellings in the group
Also written Oster
Hindi surname5 spellings in the group
Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada
Languages: Hindi, Sinhala, Urdu
Also written Oster
Russian surname13 spellings in the group
Most recorded in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish
Also written Остер, Аустер, Oster, auSTer, Остера

10 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

Oscar Österb. 1850dentist
Ebba Österb. 1904SESwedish painter
Daniel Osterb. 1949FRFrench politician
Annie ÖsterSESwedish voice actor

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

FormalDear Colleague,

InformalHello,

Evidence

8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 5 countries.

Official registers attesting Öster
Country	Register	Year	Count	Rank
SE Sweden	Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)	—	1.1K	#956
FI Finland	DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)	—	625	#2,846
FI Finland	DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register)	—	203	—
DK Denmark	Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts)	—	11	#36,821
CH Switzerland	BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)	2024	3	#154,370

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.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Öster mean, and where does it come from?: east; one of the four major compass points Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
What are other forms of the name Öster?: In the etymology graph, Norr, Söder and Öst are forms of the same name in other languages.
How do you pronounce Öster?: In Swedish /œs̪t̪ɛr/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
In which country does Öster have the most bearers?: In the United States, the national register counted about 6.3 thousand people named Öster, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled oster.
Where is Öster most common?: Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Öster is densest in Finland — about 1 in 8.9 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Öster?: In the United States, the national register counted 6,259 people named Öster in 2010, about 1 in 53 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Öster?

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/%C3%B6ster

The 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 2026-10-13 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, “Öster”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Öster parses inside a full name →