João
given name · Latin script
Meaning: John (one of four persons of the Bible)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
João 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.
- 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)
- #185 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 338 (measured from records)
- 1 in 62 (inferred from the name graph)
3,430,608 people, 2022
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Brazil
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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.
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)
John (one of four persons of the Bible)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
João 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 | #3 | 3,430,608 | 1 in 62 | 3.4M | Joao | 255 |
| PT Portugal | #3 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 86 | 1K | Joao | 239 |
| AO Angola | #2 | ≈59,000 est. | ≈1 in 556 | 46 | João | 81 |
| FR France | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.7K | 4K | João | 6 |
| US United States | — | 8,843 | 1 in 38K | 8.8K | Joao | 338 |
| EC Ecuador | #837 | 3,515 | 1 in 4.8K | 3.5K | Joao | 39 |
| CH Switzerland | #156 | ≈3,200 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | 102 | Joao | 99 |
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 recorded senses(measured from records)
João 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.
Portuguese form of JOHN .
as a word
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)
- John IV of Portugalb. 1604PTnot in their usual nameKing of Portugal from 1640 to 1656 (lived 1604-1656)
- John Bunyanb. 1628GBnot in their usual nameEnglish Christian writer and preacher (1628-1688)
- John Adamsb. 1735USnot in their usual nameFounding Father, U.S. president from 1797 to 1801 (1735–1826)
- John Quincy Adamsb. 1767USnot in their usual namePresident of the United States from 1825 to 1829
- John Updikeb. 1932USnot in their usual nameAmerican novelist, poet (1932–2009)
- John McCainb. 1936USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (1936–2018)
- Thomas J. Sargentb. 1943USnot in their usual nameAmerican economist (born 1943)
- John Grishamb. 1955USnot in their usual nameAmerican writer (born 1955)
- John Robertsb. 1955USnot in their usual nameChief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 2005
- John Cusackb. 1966USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor, producer, and screenwriter (born 1966)
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 31 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 3M | #16 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2017 | 1.7K | #3 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2018 | 1.7K | #1 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2019 | 1.7K | #2 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2020 | 1.5K | #2 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2021 | 1.4K | #2 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2022 | 1.3K | #3 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2023 | 1.1K | #6 |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Nomes próprios mais frequentes (2017–2023) | 2024 | 1K | #5 |
| AO Angola | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 46 | #1 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 1992 | 1 | — |
| PT Portugal | IRN — Lista de Nomes Próprios admitidos | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 João mean, and where does it come from?
- John (one of four persons of the Bible) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does João have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 3.4 million people named João, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joao.
- Where is João most common?
- João is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 62 people carrying it.
- What are other forms of the name João?
- In the etymology graph, John, Jack and Sean are forms of the same name in other languages; Joãozinho is a recorded short or pet form.
- Is João a male or female name?
- João 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 João?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 3,430,608 people named João in 2022, about 1 in 62 residents.
- How common is João compared with other names?
- In Brazil, João is the 3rd most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about João?
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/jo%C3%A3oThe 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, “João” — the 3rd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.