Oscar is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Oscar isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Oscar ranks 185. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 12 were named Oscar. In the entire USA, approximately 188,148 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Oscar. That is 0.06 % of all living Americans.
The given name Oscar goes back to a character in a poem from the 18th century. It is unclear whether the name is of Norse or Celtic origin. A Norse origin would give Oscar the meaning ‘spear of God’. If of Celtic origin, it would be ‘friend of the deer.’
Oscar is the nickname... of the Academy Awards, the most prestigious film prize in the world.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Oscar is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Oscar for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Oscar is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Oscar is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #27 Oscar has never been more popular than back in 1883.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Oscar was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 1,879 babies were named Oscar in the USA in 2022, ranking it #196 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1964, when it was only ranked at #235 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 1,011 boys were named Oscar.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Oscar is one of them. However, Oscar is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Texas seem to particularly fancy this name – the 36,718 men called Oscar who live here are 0,301% of all male residents and push their name up to #70 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Texas. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 188,148 people with the name Oscar. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Oscar on position 178 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter O is pretty rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an O. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Oscar is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that since 1.8% of all boys’ names begin with an O, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names beginning with an O, which are quite popular
If your name is Oscar and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Oscar, you can simply say:
Orange
Sun
Cat
Apple
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Oscar
Oscar
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
O
S
C
A
R
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
O
S
C
A
R
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Oscar sounds like this:
