Osler
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/owzlɚ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Osler is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Main GB Location (1881): Norfolk; Angus. (i) occupational name from Old French oiseleor, oiseleur ‘bird catcher, fowler’. (ii) occupational name from Old French oiselier ‘seller of game, poulterer’.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 181K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 338K
- RSSerbia≈1 in 46K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 226 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 46K (inferred from the name graph)
≈22,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Serbia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- Old Frenchoiseleor(measured from records)
- Old Frenchoiselier(measured from records)
Main GB Location (1881): Norfolk; Angus. (i) occupational name from Old French oiseleor, oiseleur ‘bird catcher, fowler’. (ii) occupational name from Old French oiselier ‘seller of game, poulterer’.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
Where in the world(measured from records)
Osler counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 64K | — | Osler | 2 |
| US United States | 985 | 1 in 338K | 1K | Osler | 226 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈430 est. | ≈1 in 131K | — | Osler | 26 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈360 est. | ≈1 in 181K | 464 | Osler | 77 |
| AR Argentina | 219 | 1 in 208K | 219 | — | — |
| CA Canada | ≈220 est. | ≈1 in 174K | — | Osler | 73 |
| RS Serbia | ≈150 est. | ≈1 in 46K | — | Osler | 1 |
| EE Estonia | ≈14 est. | ≈1 in 88K | listed | — | 3 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the ee-siseministeerium-registry register. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Osler is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Croatian, kanadski liječnik, organizator medicinske obuke (udžbenik Načela i principi medicine ); naglašava važnost kliničkog iskustva
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- A. Follett Oslerb. 1808GBBritish meteorologist (1808–1903)
- Britton Bath Oslerb. 1839CACanadian lawyer
- Marian Oslerb. 1841CA(1841-1915)
- Edmund Boyd Oslerb. 1845CACanadian politician
- William Oslerb. 1849CACanadian physician and co-founder of Johns Hopkins Hospital (1849–1919)
- Edmund Boyd Oslerb. 1919CACanadian politician, insurance executive, writer (1919-1987)
- Thomas J. Oslerb. 1940USAmerican mathematician
- Margaret J. Oslerb. 1942CACanadian historian and philosopher (1942-2010)
- Marcello Oslerb. 1945ITItalian cyclist (1945–2023)
- Gigi Oslerb. 1968CACanadian physician and Senator
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1924 | 5 | — |
| EE Estonia | Siseministeerium — population register name list 2023 | 2023 | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Osler mean, and where does it come from?
- Main GB Location (1881): Norfolk; Angus. (i) occupational name from Old French oiseleor, oiseleur ‘bird catcher, fowler’. (ii) occupational name from Old French oiselier ‘seller of game, poulterer’. Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.
- How do you pronounce Osler?
- A machine transcription gives /owzlɚ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Osler have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 22 thousand people named Osler in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled osler.
- How common is the name Osler?
- In the United States, the national register counted 985 people named Osler in 2010, about 1 in 338 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Osler?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/oslerThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Osler”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.