Joao
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Joao 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.
- 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)
Locally spelled 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 27 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Joao 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- João I de Portugalb. 1357PTKing of Portugal from 1385 to 1433
- John II of Portugalb. 1455PTnot in their usual namePortuguese king
- João IIIb. 1502PTKing of Portugal (r. 1521-1557)
- John IV of Portugalb. 1604PTnot in their usual nameKing of Portugal from 1640 to 1656 (lived 1604-1656)
- Pedro V of Portugalb. 1837PTnot in their usual nameKing of Portugal from 1853 to 1861
- João Bernardo Vieirab. 1939GWPresident of Guinea-Bissau (1939-2009)
- João Lourençob. 1954AOPresident of Angola since 2017
- João Moutinhob. 1986PTPortuguese association football player (born 1986)
- João Félixb. 1999PTPortuguese footballer (born 1999)
- Joao Grimaldob. 2003PEPeruvian association football 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 74 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 3.4M | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 3.4M | #4 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 3M | #17 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes no Brasil API (Census 2010 + 2022) | — | 3M | #2 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 247K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 20K | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.8K | #2,661 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 4K | #618 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 3.5K | #344 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 121 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 49 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 19 | #2,661 |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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 Joao mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Portuguese João. Doublet of John. Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- Is Joao a male or female name?
- Joao 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 Joao have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 3.4 million people named Joao, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled joao.
- Where is Joao most common?
- Joao is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 62 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Joao?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 3,430,608 people named Joao in 2022, about 1 in 62 residents.
- How common is Joao compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Joao is the 3rd most common given name of 474,894 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Joao?
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/joaoThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Joao” — the 3rd most common given name in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.