Rio
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Alternative form of ryō (“Japanese ounce”)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Rio is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country.
- UYUruguay≈1 in 4.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- PTPortugal≈1 in 7.1K
- ESSpain1 in 9.3K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 304 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.5K (inferred from the name graph)
8,581 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
river
Sources 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rio is read(measured from records)
Rio is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English16%
Alternative form of ryō (“Japanese ounce”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese6.3%
river
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
river (a large and often winding stream which drains a land mass, carrying water down from higher areas to a lower point, oftentimes ending in another body of water, such as an ocean or in an inland sea)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Livorno, Pisa, Middelburg, Amsterdam; que vem do rio; which comes from the river
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
- Spanish5.4%
misspelling of río
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Rio 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | 8,581 | 1 in 25K | 8.6K | Rio | 123 |
| FR France | ≈7,300 est. | ≈1 in 9.3K | 829 | Rio | 5 |
| ES Spain | 5,386 | 1 in 9.3K | 5.4K | Rio | 189 |
| CO Colombia | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Rio | 97 |
| CL Chile | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 5K | 1 | Rio | 108 |
| PT Portugal | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 7.1K | listed | Rio | 72 |
| UY Uruguay | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | — | Rio | 27 |
8,581 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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 — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the pt-irn-lista-nomes register; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Rio 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 Swedish, Rio är ett namn som ges till både flickor och pojkar. Det är identiskt med spanskans och portugisiskans río (rio) ’flod’ vilket ingår i Rio de Janeiro, namnet på Brasiliens näst största stad. Namnet kan också vara av japanskt ursprung och då betyda ’plats med körsbärsblommor’. En känd namnbärare är den engelske fotbollsspelaren Rio Ferdinand (f. 1978).
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
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)
- Patrice Riob. 1948FRFrench footballer
- Rio Ferdinandb. 1978GBEnglish association football player (born 1978)
- Rio Matsumotob. 1982JPJapanese actress, yoga instructor (1982-)
- Rio Mavubab. 1984FRFrench footballer (born 1984)
- Rio Asumib. 1985JPTakarazuka Revue actor
- Rio Hamasakib. 1988JPJapanese actress
- Rio Yamashitab. 1992JPJapanese model and actress
- Rio Teramotob. 2001JPJapanese pin-up model
- Rio Manginib. 2002USAmerican film actor, actor and pianist
- Rio Suzukib. 2005JPJapanese actress, voice actor, talent, singer (2005-)
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(measured from records)
Attested in 94 sources across 46 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 870 | #3,128 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 363 | #2,658 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 230 | #2,109 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 71 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 67 | #52,382 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 30 | #19,624 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Rio mean?
- In English, Alternative form of ryō (“Japanese ounce”).
- Where does the name Rio come from?
- river Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese.
- In which country does Rio have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 8.6 thousand people named Rio, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rio.
- How common is the name Rio?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 8,581 people named Rio, about 1 in 25 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rio?
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/rioThe 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, “Rio”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.