Ayo
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: A greeting
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ayo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 1.8K(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 88K
- USUnited States1 in 475K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ayo itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 275 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
the guardian of an orphan in a community, from Sp. ayo tutor, guardian, a masc. form of aya nurse (L avia grand¬ mother) . 2. The surname is common in Bilbao in the Basque country, and it is possible that it was adopted as a Castilian form of the Basque surname Aia or Aya, a topographic name from Basque ai slope + the def. art. -a.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Ayo is read(measured from records)
Ayo is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- English76%
A greeting.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Swahili9.3%
sole of foot
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
footprint
as a wordBantu Lexical Reconstructions 3 (BLR3), Tervuren 2002/2003
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Ayo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #305 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | listed | Ayo | 113 |
| UG Uganda | #273 | ≈3,000 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Ayo | 15 |
| MA Morocco | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Ayo | 13 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 88K | listed | Ayo | 153 |
| US United States | — | 700 | 1 in 475K | 821 | Ayo | 275 |
| DK Denmark | — | 191as Ayoe | 1 in 31K | 191 | — | — |
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: the african-book-names-hodari-2003 register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Ayo is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Spanish, the guardian of an orphan in a community, from Sp. ayo tutor, guardian, a masc. form of aya nurse (L avia grand¬ mother) . 2. The surname is common in Bilbao in the Basque country, and it is possible that it was adopted as a Castilian form of the Basque surname Aia or Aya, a topographic name from Basque ai slope + the def. art. -a.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In Spanish, person who takes care of children, tutor
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, aus Nigeria stammender männl. Vom., der in der Yoruba-Sprache »Glück, Freude« bedeutet.
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
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)
- Ayo-Maria Atoyebib. 1944NGNigerian bishop
- Ayo Akinwaleb. 1946NGNigerian actor
- Ayo Shonaiyab. 1968NGproducer and talent agent
- Ayo Adesanyab. 1969NGNigerian film actress
- Ayo Makunb. 1971NGNigerian comedian and actor
- John Akindeb. 1989GBnot in their usual nameEnglish association football player (born 1989)
- Ayo Simon Okosunb. 1993DKDanish association football player
- Ayo Obileyeb. 1994GBEnglish association football player (born 1994)
- Ayo Edebirib. 1995USAmerican actress and comedian
- Ayo Akinolab. 2000CACanadian soccer player
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 48 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 427 | #16,212 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 273 | #16,212 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 77 | #1,919 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 14 | #5,443 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2024 | 9 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2021 | 5 | — |
| NG Nigeria | The African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | naija-faker — Nigerian Given Names by Ethnicity (Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | naija-faker — Nigerian Given Names by Ethnicity (Hausa/Igbo/Yoruba) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | Nigerian names by ethnicity (naijafaker, MIT) | — | — | — |
| NG Nigeria | Nigerian names by ethnicity (naijafaker, MIT) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Ayo mean?
- In English, A greeting.
- Where does the name Ayo come from?
- the guardian of an orphan in a community, from Sp. ayo tutor, guardian, a masc. form of aya nurse (L avia grand¬ mother) . 2. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- Is Ayo a male or female name?
- Ayo is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Ayo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 117 thousand people named Ayo in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ayo.
- How common is the name Ayo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 700 people named Ayo in 2020, about 1 in 475 thousand residents.
- How common is Ayo compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Ayo is the 305th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ayo?
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/ayoThe 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, “Ayo” — the 305th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.