Oliver

146,493 people in America carry this name — ranked #379 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Alpha.

Say it AH luh vur

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

AA1 L AH0 V ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 146,493 2020 Census
  • Rank #379 Common
  • Per 100,000 48.5 about 1 in 2,263 people
  • As a surname 109,817 ranked #278 the other way round

Where Oliver comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “olive”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Oliver has been given

195,251 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2020, with 14,170 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Oliver

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Oliver Robert — runs together
  • Oliver Richard — runs together
  • Oliver Ronald — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

On the way up

Oliver is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Is Oliver a boy's or a girl's name?

99.6% men
655 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

How Oliver is spelled

Oliver is how 25% of them spell it — 595,866 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The same name abroad

  • Olier Breton
  • Olivia English
  • Olivier French
  • Oliviero Italian
  • Oliveros Spanish
  • Oliverio Portuguese

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Names with the same rhythm as Oliver

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 65.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.8%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 18.5%
  • Two or more races — 6.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 4.1%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin