Osvaldo
Masculine · “god + power”
Osvaldo is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 14,526 boys against 12 girls since 1880.
Osvaldo is the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian shape of a very old English name, Oswald, carried through medieval Europe by the cult of a seventh-century Northumbrian king and reshaped by Romance mouths into four warm syllables. It has been on American birth records since the era of the First World War and has never left them. Say it aloud and the stress lands in the middle — oz-VAHL-doh — which is why it sounds so settled in Spanish.
How old is the name Osvaldo?
Osvaldo first appears in US birth records in 1917 — 108 years ago. The typical Osvaldo alive today was born around 2001, making them about 24 years old. About 14,000 people named Osvaldo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Osvaldo most popular?
Osvaldo peaked in 2004, reaching #410 nationally. Today it ranks #1401, 991 places below that high. See the whole 2004 chart.
Osvaldo appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Ōsweald to Osvaldo
The story of Osvaldo
The name begins in Old English as Ōsweald and belongs to the Anglo-Saxon habit of building names from two weighty words — here 'god' and 'power'. Oswald of Northumbria, a king of the seventh century, was venerated as a saint far beyond England, and his cult carried the name into German-speaking lands and the Alpine valleys of northern Italy, where churches to San Osvaldo still stand. In Romance languages the w softened to v and a final vowel was added, giving Osvaldo in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. It reached the United States mainly through Spanish-speaking families, and has appeared on American records continuously for more than a century.
Meaning
god + power, ruler
From Old English ōs, 'a god', and weald, 'rule, power'. The first element is the same one behind Oscar and Osmond, and is cognate with the Old Norse áss.
How the name formed
- Ōsweald
- Oswald
- Osvaldo
Related forms: Oswald · Oswaldo · Oswald · Osvald · Oszvald · Ásvaldr
Pronouncing Osvaldo
oz-VAHL-doh
Stress on the middle syllable. In Spanish the s is crisp and the v sounds close to a soft b: os-BAHL-do. Both versions are correct in their own setting, and neither requires correcting the other.
Nicknames for Osvaldo
High
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
- 1917
- Most boys named
- 2003546 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #410reached in 2004
- Change vs 2023
- −13.9%130 in 2025, from 151
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.
Osvaldo in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Oswald in English — same name
- Oswaldo in Spanish — spelling variant
- Oswald in German — same name
- Osvald in Swedish — same name
- Oszvald in Hungarian — same name
- Ásvaldr in Old Norse — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, California, Florida.
Osvaldos among us
people named Osvaldo are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 13,139 born in 2025 was named Osvaldo
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lenard test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Osvaldo's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lenard climbed just as high around 1932, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lenard's path sketches the road Osvaldo is walking now.
Osvaldo sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Osvaldo is headed
Osvaldo should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Osvaldo beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Osvaldo in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Works unchanged in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, and is recognizable to English speakers through Oswald.
- Spelled the way it sounds in Spanish, so it rarely needs correcting within Spanish-speaking families.
- A documented line running back to Old English, unbroken for well over a thousand years.
- Comes with a ready-made short form, Ozzie, that needs no explaining in English.
- Osvaldo and Oswaldo both exist and both are correct, so in English-speaking contexts you may be spelling it out often — the v-versus-w question comes up nearly every time.
- English speakers who reach for the familiar Oswald may stumble on the stress, and Oswald itself carries a heavy twentieth-century American association that a few people will hear behind the name.
- It is uncommon enough in the US that a child is unlikely to share it with a classmate — good if you want that, worth knowing if you would rather your child's name be instantly familiar to teachers.
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What they receive
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Osvaldo
Masculine · #1401 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Osvaldos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 14,000 people named Osvaldo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Osvaldo in 2025?
- Osvaldo ranks #1401 among US boy names in 2025, with 130 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Osvaldo?
- About 1 in every 13,139 US boys born in 2025 was named Osvaldo — 130 in all.
- Will my child share the name Osvaldo with classmates?
- Osvaldo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Osvaldo
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Mahir#1401 · Alder#1401 · Advik#1401 · Eliot#1401 · Niklaus#1401 · Micheal#1401 · Lisandro#1401 · Aariv#1393
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Osvaldo? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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