Owusu

surname · Akan · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Owusu is a surname, most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is the 95th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Akan and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: The clearer of the way.

rarermore common
  • GHGhana1 in 545◐
  • GBUnited Kingdom1 in 41K
  • NLNetherlands1 in 55K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈4.6K ●

across 14 countries

Sources
275 ●

45K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 36K ◐

Norway

Meaning & origin●

The clearer of the way

Sources 1

  • The book of African names

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Owusu is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
GH Ghana#9525,72914K rec.—412KOwusu141
GB United Kingdom—5,7093.3K rec.——Owusu121
US United States—2,93820K rec.1 in 113K4.5KOwusu275
DE Germany—1,2431.3K rec.—1Owusu83
ES Spain—645△229 rec.1 in 78K645—36
CA Canada—636586 rec.——Owusu82
IT Italy—606733 rec.——Owusu49
AU Australia—550572 rec.——Owusu59
MH Marshall Islands#24132.2K rec.——Owusu1
NL Netherlands—315457 rec.1 in 55K315Owusu45
ZA South Africa—288339 rec.——Owusu33
NG Nigeria—226328 rec.——Owusu25

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Akan412K82%
  • English56K11%
  • Swahili16K3%
  • Spanish2.7K1%
  • French2.3K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Akan412,16182%
English56,11511%
Swahili15,5693%
Spanish2,7121%
French2,3061%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Owusu is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate surname2.2K records spelled Owusu2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Ghana, United Kingdom, India

  • Arabic surname2.0K records spelled Owusu3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Egypt, Ghana, United States, United Arab Emirates

    Also written Ôwüšú

60 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Notable people with this name●

19401960198020002020Kwasi Owusu, b. 1947Elsie Owusu, b. 1953Ursula Owusu, b. 1964Akosua Adoma Owusu, b. 1984Sarkodie, b. 1985Samuel Owusu, b. 1996Elisha Owusu, b. 1997Prince Owusu, b. 1997Leonard Owusu, b. 1997Daniel Owusu, b. 2003

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).

Evidence●

Attested in 42 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Owusu
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
GH GhanaGhana top-100 surnames (surnam.es)—412K#2
GH GhanaHeuristic parse of ghanacitizenship.com202652K#100
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020204.5K#7,177
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.9K#10,837
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.4K#17,970
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—645#6,506
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—645#6,504
GH GhanaGhanaian name database with surnames and first names categorized by gender and frequency.2023473#3
BE BelgiumStatbel — Noms de famille (family names)—444#3,526
NL NetherlandsCBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007)2007315#6,481
BE BelgiumFamilienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register)2008173#9,670
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—150#10,541

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 59 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Owusu?
We estimate roughly 4.6 thousand people bear Owusu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 14 countries in our records.
In which country does Owusu have the most bearers?
Owusu is most frequently recorded in Ghana, where it is most often spelled owusu.
How common is Owusu compared with other names?
In Ghana, Owusu is the 95th most common surname of 34,696 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Owusu mean?
Recorded meaning: The clearer of the way
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/owusu

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

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, “Owusu” — the 95th most common surname in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Owusu parses inside a full name →