Joâo

given name · Latin script

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

/ʒuɐu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Joâo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common given name. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Portuguese João. Doublet of John.

rarermore common
  • BRBrazil1 in 62(measured from records)
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 86
  • AOAngola≈1 in 556

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.

Brazil (measured from records)

3,430,608 people, 2022

#185 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
338 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 62 (inferred from the name graph)

Brazil

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

JoâoLatin(measured from records)
ЖоаоCyrillic(measured from records)
조고Hangul(measured from records)
ΖοαοGreek(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Joao in BR Brazil, PT Portugal, US United States and 2 more and João in AO Angola, FR France.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Borrowed from Portuguese João. Doublet of John.

Sources 2

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Joâo 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.

Where Joâo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#33,430,6081 in 623.4MJoao255
PT Portugal#3≈120,000 est.≈1 in 861KJoao239
AO Angola#2≈59,000 est.≈1 in 55646João81
FR France—≈12,000 est.≈1 in 5.7K4KJoão6
US United States—8,8431 in 38K8.8KJoao338
EC Ecuador#8373,5151 in 4.8K3.5KJoao39
CH Switzerland#156≈3,200 est.≈1 in 2.6K102Joao99

3,430,608 people counted by IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror), 2022. 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INEC — civil registry names. 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Joâo is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Joao, João, Joào, Joäo, Joāo

  • a separate name15 spellings in the group

    Also written Joao, Joäo, Joăo, Jôao, João

  • Italian given name7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland

    Also written Joao, João, Joăo, Joào, Joäo

  • Indonesian given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, United States, Peru, Malaysia

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Joao, Joaó, Joāo, Joăo, Joäo

4 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.

How to address them(machine-generated)

InformalOlá Joâo,Hi Joâo, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 9 sources across 6 countries.

Official registers attesting Joâo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Nomes (census name API)—3M#19

Reference works 2

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Joâo mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Portuguese João. Doublet of John. Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
How do you pronounce Joâo?
A machine transcription gives /ʒuɐu/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
Is Joâo a male or female name?
Joâo is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Joâo have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 3.4 million people named Joâo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joao.
Where is Joâo most common?
Joâo is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 62 people carrying it.
How common is the name Joâo?
In Brazil, the national register counted 3,430,608 people named Joâo in 2022, about 1 in 62 residents.
How common is Joâo compared with other names?
In Brazil, Joâo is the 3rd most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Joâo?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/jo%C3%A2o

The 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, “Joâo” — the 3rd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Joâo parses inside a full name →