Given name & surname
Oda
“wielding a spear of the elves”
Oda is used as a given name and a surname. One German interpretation is “wielding a spear of the elves.”
Original GermanUte
Meaning & origin
What it means
One German interpretation is “wielding a spear of the elves.”
Where it comes from
An origin associated with this spelling is German.
How it developed
From Japanese 織田 (Oda), from Japanese 小田 (Oda), from Japanese 尾田 (Oda).
Adapted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The story
Published U.S. birth records include this spelling as early as 1880. This is the earliest published observation available here, rather than a date for the name’s origin.
From dated birth records
Oda through the years
- Babies since 1880
- 1,625
- 301 boys · 1,324 girls
- Most popular year
- 1918
- 52 babies
- 2025
- 0
- Outside the ranked list
- 2021–25 vs 2016–20
- —
- Too few births to compare
By the numbers
The most recent published U.S. birth count for girls is 5 in 1962. Later missing counts do not mean the name went unused. Published U.S. population figures for this spelling include 322 as a first name in 2020; 1,735 as a surname in 2020.
From Social Security birth records and U.S. Census name counts for this exact spelling. Other spellings are counted separately.
Oda’s family of names
Oda has a diminutive in Odette. In German usage, Oda shares a linguistic root with the Norwegian form Aud. In German usage, Oda has a related form in Ute.
Inner ring: spellings · middle: nicknames and forms · outer: across languages.
Around the world
Oda has relatives in 5 languages. Lines run from its German roots to each of them.
Germanwhere Oda comes from · 1 name
Nicknames & forms 11
Diminutives, pet forms, short forms and variants used alongside the name.
- Utevariant · German
- Odettediminutive
- Odeliavariant
- Ordalphvariant
- Ordalfvariant
- Odiannvariant
- Odiannevariant
- Odiannavariant
Show 3 moreShow fewer
Spellings & scripts 4
The same name written differently, including transliterations into other scripts.
Across languages 6
Equivalents and cognates in other languages, plus older forms it grew from.
People named Oda
- Oda KrohgNorwegian painter, wife of Christian Krohg (1860-1935)
- OtaQueen of Germany, wife of Arnulf I874
- Oda of HaldenslebenGerman noblewoman and consort to Mieszko I of Poland901–1023
- Oda of MeissenQueen consort of Poland996–1025
- Saint OdaScottish princess680–726
- Oda SchottmüllerGerman resistance fighter (1905–1943)
- Oda JauneBulgarian painterborn 1979
- Oda Maria Hove BogstadNorwegian association football playerborn 1996
- Oda of SaxonySaxon princess877
Listed by how widely each person is written about, which says nothing about the name itself.
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