Odin
- Pronunciation
- [O-din]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Wealthy Defender
- Origin
- Anglo
About the Name Odin
Odin descends from the Old Norse Óðinn, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent Wōden — the chief god of Norse mythology, the All-Father of the Aesir gods. Odin presides over the Norse pantheon from his hall in Asgard (Valhalla, where the souls of slain warriors are gathered) and is associated with wisdom, war, poetry, and runic magic. Odin sacrificed one of his eyes for wisdom and hung himself for nine days from the World Tree Yggdrasil to learn the secrets of the runes.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the Marvel Comics version of Odin (created in 1962, played by Anthony Hopkins in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Thor films 2011–2017) — bringing the name to widespread American attention. The day Wednesday in English is named after Odin/Wōden ("Wōden's day").
Odin's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2010 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Norse-mythological-Marvel pedigree, the in-built distinctive god-of-wisdom-war register, and the compact two-syllable structure with the distinctive Od-N consonant rhythm. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility across casual and formal registers. The name reads as both classical-mythological and contemporary American with the strong Marvel Cinematic Universe cultural anchor. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Od and the rare Odie each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Odin and Oden have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Óðinn (Old Norse original), Wōden (Anglo-Saxon), Wotan (German), and the broader related Norse pantheon family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Odin
US Popularity History (2008–2025)
Annual US births named Odin by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2022 with 1,022 boys named Odin (boy rank #331 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #502 for boys (604 US births). That's 171 places below its 2022 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Odin Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Odin the strongest states are Wyoming, Alaska, Minnesota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | #110 | 16 |
| 2 | Alaska | #128 | 68 |
| 3 | Minnesota | #144 | 444 |
| 4 | Maine | #146 | 85 |
| 5 | North Dakota | #164 | 79 |
| 6 | Montana | #166 | 56 |
| 7 | South Dakota | #170 | 81 |
| 8 | New Hampshire | #172 | 72 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #204 | 291 |
| 10 | Hawaii | #209 | 29 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #683 | 130 |
| 2 | Louisiana | #604 | 78 |
| 3 | Alabama | #604 | 63 |
| 4 | Maryland | #590 | 80 |
| 5 | Texas | #588 | 448 |
| 6 | New Jersey | #561 | 111 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #551 | 56 |
| 8 | North Carolina | #489 | 186 |
| 9 | New York | #484 | 331 |
| 10 | Virginia | #471 | 163 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Odin in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odo | Name Of A Bishop | Male | French |
Looking for names like Odin?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Odin to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Odin against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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