Olav
Olav reached its high-water mark in 1919 at number 3,391, and has been recorded 38 times in all. It has not appeared in the national data since 2022. About 13 Olavs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 53.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Olav
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 38
- Estimated living today
- 13
- Median age today
- 53
- Peak year
- 1919
- Best rank
- 3,391st
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1919
How old the living Olavs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 38 babies given the name since 1919, about 13 are alive — 35 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1972 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.
Notable Olavs
- Olav V of Norway (1903–1991)king of Norway
- Johann Olav Koss (born 1968)Norwegian speed skater
- Olav Magnusson of Norway (1099–1115)king of Norway in 1103–1115
- Olav Duun (1876–1939)Norwegian writer
- Olav Bjaaland (1873–1961)Norwegian skier and Antarctica explorer
- Johan-Olav Botn (born 1999)Norwegian biathlete
- Olav Kooij (born 2001)Dutch cyclist
- Olav Aukrust (1883–1929)Norwegian lyricist
People named Olav with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Names of 1919
The most popular boys’ names the year Olav peaked:
Olav elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Olav | 14,530 | 18th |
| France boys | Olav | 5 | 1,992nd |
| Poland boys | Olav | 5 birth registrations | 594th |
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.
Olav 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 | Olav | 92 | 703 |
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
Olav 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.