Jaco
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Of uncertain origin. 1
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʒɐku/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jaco is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 2.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- NLNetherlands1 in 15K
- BRBrazil1 in 28K
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.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 258 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈24,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Of uncertain origin. 1. Perhaps Spanish and Portuguese (Jaco) or southern Italian (Jaco): from the personal name (see Jacob). 2. Possibly a respelling of French Jacot.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jaco 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #431 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Jaco | 111 |
| BR Brazil | — | 7,474 | 1 in 28K | 8.7K | Jaco | 82 |
| NL Netherlands | #749 | 1,116 | 1 in 15K | 1.1K | Jaco | 86 |
| US United States | — | 346 | 1 in 961K | 2.2K | Jaco | 258 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈270 est. | ≈1 in 236K | — | Jaco | 9 |
| HK Hong Kong | — | ≈160 est. | ≈1 in 44K | — | Jaco | 9 |
| NZ New Zealand | — | ≈89 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Jaco | 24 |
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); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020. 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)
Jaco 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 Spanish, small horse
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Jacó Guinsburgb. 1921BRuniversity professor and researcher active in Brazil
- Jacó Roberto Hilgertb. 1926BRBrazilian priest (1926-2020)
- Jaco Van Dormaelb. 1957BEBelgian director and writer
- Jaco Geurtsb. 1970NLDutch politician
- Jaco van der Westhuyzenb. 1978ZASouth African rugby union footballer
- Jaco Pretoriusb. 1979ZASouth African rugby union footballer
- Jaco Peyperb. 1980ZARetired South African rugby union referee
- Jaco van Gassb. 1986ZABritish paracyclist
- Jacobus Venterb. 1987ZAnot in their usual nameSouth African cyclist
- Jaco van den Hovenb. 1990NLDutch model
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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
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 42 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 8.7K | #2,347 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 8.7K | #825 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 7.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 7.4K | #2,074 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2020 | 7.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2010 | 6.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2000 | 5.9K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1990 | 4.7K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1980 | 3.4K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1970 | 2.2K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1980 | 1.3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1960 | 1.2K | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Jaco come from?
- Of uncertain origin. 1. Perhaps Spanish and Portuguese (Jaco) or southern Italian (Jaco): from the personal name (see Jacob). 2. Possibly a respelling of French Jacot. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- In which country does Jaco have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 24 thousand people named Jaco in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jaco.
- How do you pronounce Jaco?
- A machine transcription gives /ʒɐku/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- What does the name Jaco mean?
- Recorded meaning: Of uncertain origin. 1.
- Is Jaco a male or female name?
- Jaco 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.
- How common is the name Jaco?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 7,474 people named Jaco in 2022, about 1 in 28 thousand residents.
- How common is Jaco compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Jaco is the 431st most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Jaco?
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/jacoThe 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, “Jaco” — the 431st most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.