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NameCurve
Boys' name · 238,353 recorded births

Oscar

#223 in the US in 2025

Where Oscar stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#223boys’ names · US 2025

Oscar was the 223rd most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 1,620 births.

peak 2006 · 3,601188019532025

Its moment was 2006, when 3,601 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#223US rank, 2025 (boys)
1,620US births in 2025
#26its best US rank, in 1883
2006peak year — 3,601 births
213,098US births since 1880
3,452NZ births since 1900
20,733E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Oscar's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Oscar was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Oscar in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0291582
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Oscar in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Oscar in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Oscar has been registered 3,452 times since 1900, peaking in 2022 with 166 births. It ranked #21 for boys in 2025 on 116 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0469937
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Oscar in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Oscar in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Oscar was registered 20,733 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2019 with 3,334 births. It ranked #8 for boys in 2025 on 2,798 births.

20200.05651131
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Oscar in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#29544
1890#29628
1900#47563
1910#73505
1920#902,006
1930#1241,467
1940#167936
1950#1921,103
1960#2451,066
1970#2251,042
1980#1751,396
1990#1352,328
2000#1223,178
2010#1472,665
2020#2141,766

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Oscar most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California42,697
Texas37,523
New York9,964
Illinois8,876
Florida6,684
Georgia6,475
North Carolina5,398
Arizona5,352
Alabama4,221
Virginia3,659

Questions about Oscar

How popular is the name Oscar?

Oscar ranked #223 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 1,620 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Oscar most popular?

Oscar peaked in 2006, when 3,601 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Oscar rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Oscar has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2006, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.