The history of your name

The OSWALD surname in the USA

Frequency Comparisons
Total Rank Frequency % Per million people
United States
United States (Current snapshot) 14,332 2313 0.005 53
United States (1880 census) 2,587 2355 0.005 52
Change since 1880 +11745 +42 0 +1
Other Countries
Australia 662 2440 0.004 40
United Kingdom 1,331 4146 0.003 29
Top States for OSWALD by Total
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
Pennsylvania 1,553 852 0.013 126
California 947 3248 0.003 28
Michigan 844 1281 0.008 85
New York 839 2220 0.004 44
Ohio 786 1740 0.007 69
Top States for OSWALD by Frequency
State Total Rank in State Frequency % Per million people
South Dakota 116 693 0.015 154
Idaho 186 914 0.014 144
Nebraska 229 775 0.013 134
South Carolina 527 1275 0.013 131
Pennsylvania 1,553 852 0.013 126

Notes

'A figure of zero indicates that we don't have data for this name (usually because it's quite uncommon and our stats don't go down that far). It doesn't mean that there's no-one with that name at all!

For less common surnames, the figures get progressively less reliable the fewer holders of that name there are. This data is aggregated from several public lists, and some stats are interpolated from known values. The margin of error is well over 100% at the rarest end of the table!

For less common surnames, the frequency and "per million" values may be 0 even though there are people with that name. That's because they represent less than one in a million of the population, which ends up as 0 after rounding.

It's possible for a surname to gain in rank and/or total while being less common per million people (or vice versa) as there are now more surnames in the USA as a result of immigration. In mathematical terms, the tail has got longer, with a far larger number of less common surnames.

Figures for top states show firstly the states where most people called OSWALD live. This obviously tends to be biased towards the most populous states. The second set of figures show where people called OSWALD represent the biggest proportion of the population. So, in this case, there are more people called OSWALD in Pennsylvania than any other state, but you are more likely to find a OSWALD by picking someone at random in South Dakota than anywhere else.

Classification and Origin of OSWALD

Region of origin: British Isles

Country of origin: England

Language of origin: English

Ethnic origin: English

Religious origin: Christian

Name derivation: From given name or forename

Data for religion and/or language relates to the culture in which the OSWALD surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the language spoken, or religion practised, by the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Data for ethnic origin relates to the region and country in which the OSWALD surname originated. It does not necessarily have any correlation with the ethnicity of the majority of current American citizens with that name.

Ethnic distribution of OSWALD in the USA

Classification Total Percent
White (Hispanic) 219 1.53
Mixed Race 119 0.83
Black/African American 95 0.66
Asian/Pacific 57 0.4
Native American/Alaskan 42 0.29
White (Caucasian) 13,800 96.29

Ethnic distribution data shows the number and percentage of people with the OSWALD surname who reported their ethnic background as being in these broad categories in the most recent national census.

Meaning of OSWALD in historical publications

(origin: Sax.) From hus, a house, and wald, a ruler--a house-ruler or steward; a king of Northumberland.

Arthur, William (1857) An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman. Public Domain.


OSWALD. An A-Sax. personal name.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.


Similar names to OSWALD

The following names have similar spellings or pronunciations as OSWALD.

This does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between the names, but may indicate names that could be mistaken for this one when written down or misheard.

Matches are generated automatically by a combination of Soundex, Metaphone and Levenshtein matching.

Potential typos for OSWALD

The following words are slight variants of OSWALD that are likely to be possible typos or misspellings in written material.