Orman
Masculine · “Serpent”
Orman is a Norse name that survived in the English north, and the man who made its root famous was a monk with an obsession about spelling that was about eight hundred years ahead of anybody else.
How old is the name Orman?
Orman first appears in US birth records in 1908 — 117 years ago. The typical Orman alive today was born around 1930, making them about 95 years old. About 200 people named Orman are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Orman most popular?
Orman peaked in 1915, reaching #1100 nationally. See the whole 1915 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Ormr to Orman
The story of Orman
An English monk called Orm, writing in the twelfth century, decided that his readers could not be trusted to pronounce English correctly, and invented a solution: every short vowel would be followed by a doubled consonant, consistently, everywhere. He then wrote twenty thousand lines in that system, in his own hand, and called the book after himself. It is the earliest deliberate spelling reform in English and one of the best records we have of how the language actually sounded then, because he was so rigid about it. Nobody copied him. English spent the next eight centuries getting steadily less phonetic, and the rule he invented survives only by accident in words like sitting and hopping.
Meaningscholars disagree
Serpent, dragon
The Norse personal name Orm means a serpent or a dragon, and it is all over the north of England in place names and surnames. The second half may be the ordinary word man or may be a worn-down ending; the combination has not been settled.
How the name formed
- Ormr
- Orman
Pronouncing Orman
OR-mun
Two syllables, stress at the front. The ending is unstressed, closer to mun than to man.
Nicknames for Orman
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1908
- Most boys named
- 192131 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1100reached in 1915
- Change vs 1977
- 0.0%7 in 1984, from 7
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Ormans among us
people named Orman are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Orman sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is short, firm and carried by almost nobody alive.
- The meaning is vivid, if the usual reading holds.
- It is read correctly on sight.
- It will be heard as Norman, Orville or Herman, which are all nearby.
- The name belongs entirely to one American era.
- The second half has not been explained, so the meaning covers only part of it.
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Orman
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Ormans are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 200 people named Orman are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Orman in 2025?
- Orman is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Orman with classmates?
- Orman will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More O names
The most-given names starting with O, all years combined.
Oliver#3 · Owen#31 · Oscar#223 · Omar#260 · Otis#652 · Orlando#871 · Otto#277 · Orville#6143
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Orman? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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