Oswald
Oswald is a boy's name that peaked in 1916, when it was the 552nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,145th. About 1,900 Oswalds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 34.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Oswald
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,407
- Estimated living today
- 1,900
- Median age today
- 34
- Peak year
- 1916
- Best rank
- 552nd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,145th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Oswalds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,407 babies given the name since 1880, about 1,900 are alive — 43 in every hundred. Roughly 660 of them are children and 360 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1991 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 Old English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Oswalds
- Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)German historian and philosopher
- Oswald Mosley (1896–1980)British aristocrat and fascist politician
- Oswald Avery (1877–1955)Canadian-born American physician and medical researcher
- Oswald Gracias (born 1944)Catholic cardinal
- Oswald Achenbach (1827–1905)German artist
- Oswald Veblen (1880–1960)American mathematician
- Oswald Pohl (1892–1951)German SS functionary, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, convicted war criminal
- Oswald of Northumbria (604–642)King of Northumbria
People named Oswald with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Oswald is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Oswald is most concentrated in New York (4.7×), Louisiana (3.4×), Minnesota (3.1×), California (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1916
The most popular boys’ names the year Oswald peaked:
Oswald elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Oswald | 870 | 568th |
| England and Wales boys | Oswald | 238 | 1,076th |
| Belgium boys | Oswald | 5 | 1,391st |
| Scotland boys | Oswald | 3 | 762nd |
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.
Oswald 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 | Oswald | 13 | 141 |
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
Oswald 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.