Gustav
Gustav is a boy's name that peaked in 1917, when it was the 597th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,658th. About 1,700 Gustavs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 29.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Gustav
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,267
- Estimated living today
- 1,700
- Median age today
- 29
- Peak year
- 1917
- Best rank
- 597th
- Rank in 2025
- 3,658th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Gustavs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,267 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,700 are alive — 39 in every hundred. Roughly 560 of them are children and 300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1996 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Germanic languages
A common royal name in Sweden, from gmq-osw Gøtstaf, from Old Norse. The oldest record in Sweden dates back to the year 1225 ("Gostauus"). In Peder Swart's chronicle about Gustav Vasa dated in the mid-1500s, the name is spelled Götstaff and is assumed to mean "Staff of the Geats.".
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gustavs
- Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)Austrian late-Romantic composer
- Gustav Klimt (1862–1918)Austrian symbolist painter
- Gustav Kirchhoff (1824–1887)German physicist
- Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887–1975)German physicist
- Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929)German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
- Gustav I of Sweden (1496–1560)King of Sweden from 1523 to 1560
- Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851)German mathematician
- Gustáv Husák (1913–1991)Czechoslovak politician, 8th President of Czechoslovakia
People named Gustav with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gustav is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gustav is most concentrated in North Dakota (5.8×), New York (4.8×), New Jersey (3.4×), Minnesota (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1917
The most popular boys’ names the year Gustav peaked:
Gustav elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden boys | Gustav | 14,007 | 15th |
| Denmark boys | Gustav | 6,326 | 17th |
| Norway boys | Gustav | 3,624 | 19th |
| England and Wales boys | Gustav | 182 | 1,786th |
| France boys | Gustav | 150 | 2,880th |
| Poland boys | Gustav | 131 birth registrations | 294th |
| Switzerland boys | Gustav | 130 | 734th |
| Belgium boys | Gustav | 74 | 984th |
| Scotland boys | Gustav | 9 | 733rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Gustav: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Gustav | 95 | 0.008% | 592nd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Gustav | 34 | 0.008% | 421st |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Gustav | 1 | 0.002% | 182nd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Gustav is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 54 of them.
Gustav: rank by region
In 2023, Gustav was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gustav | 769 | 6 |
In 2024, Gustav was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Gustav | 255 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Gustav | 250 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Gustav by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 230 | 98th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Gustav among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Gustav | 418 | 4,238 |
Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 4,238 who carry it, 418 go by it.
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Gustav against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.