Owen is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The first name Owen is one of the top 100 most popular boys names in the US – currently at #28 in our SmartGenius ranking. Over 1,000 babies each year are named Owen, accounting for approximately 0.50 % of all newborn boys. In the entire USA, approximately 215,956 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Owen. That is 0.06 % of all living Americans.
The name Owen is widely used in English-speaking countries. According to the origin, however, it is a Latin and Greek influenced first name. Here we find the name Eugenius, which is composed of the two components ‘eu’ for ‘good’ and ‘genos’ for ‘descent’. Thus it means as much as ‘of noble origin’. Over the language change the name has developed in the Welsh then finally to Owen.
Interesting facts! Popular female variants of Owen include Eowyn and Owena.
Owen Wilson (*1968)
The American actor and Oscar-nominated screenwriter is known for his comedic roles. He is a longtime collaborator of filmmaker Wes Anderson. His credits include The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Wedding Crashers (2005), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).
Owen Wister (1860 - 1938)
Wister was an American writer and historian born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is remembered for writing a biography of Ulysses S. Grant and The Virginian (1902) which is one of the first fictional cowboy novels ever written.
Owen Hargreaves (*1981)
Hargreaves is a former professional soccer player who played for Bayern Munich, Manchester United, and Manchester City. He was considered a promising talent, but many injuries prevented him from realizing his potential. Hargreaves won the UEFA Champions League twice.
Owen Hart (1965 - 1999)
A professional wrestler who is also known under his ring name The Blue Blazer. He belonged to the Hart wrestling family and was the youngest of 12 children of wrestler Stu Hart. In 1999, he died as a result of an accident in front of a live audience.
When you hear the name Owen, you might first think of people. But did you know that there are also places with the name Owen? Are you also called Owen? Maybe one day you will visit the places that are named just like you...
is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, with approximately 21,000 inhabitants. The primary tourist attraction are the many waterfalls near the town.
in the eastern Sierra Nevada, California, United States, is called Owens Lake. The diversion of the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct caused the lake to desiccate in 1926.
Washington, there is the Owen Science and Engineering Library. It is part of the Washington State University.
serves approximately 850 students in grades 7 and 8. It is located in East Coventry Township, Pennsylvania, USA.
If we dig really deep into our statistics, we find that there are very few boys' names that have been consistently popular for so long that they have been given to newborns in every single year since the beginning of our records in 1880. In fact, there are only 442 boys' names that appear in our statistics in every single year, and Owen is one of those very special classics. At the same time, Owen has never been more popular than it is in this century - in 2022 the name even made it to rank #18 of the most popular boys' names, easily landing in the top 100 of our SmartGenius first name statistics.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Owen was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
...because: In 2022, 8,572 boys were born and given the name Owen by their parents. That puts Owen at #18 on our list of most popular boys' names. It was much less popular in 1971 - only 248 parents chose this name for their newborn son and it ranked 480 on the popularity scale of all boys' names.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Owen is one of them. However, Owen is not equally widespread in all states, but people in New Hampshire seem to particularly fancy this name – the 1,738 men called Owen who live here are 0,325% of all male residents and push their name up to #78 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in New Hampshire. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 215,956 people with the name Owen. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Owen on position 164 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 four letters, the name Owen is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four 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 Owen 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 Owen, you can simply say:
Orange
Windmill
Elephant
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Owen
Owen
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
O
W
E
N
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
W
E
N
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. Owen sounds like this:
