Mao

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Initialism of monoamine oxidase

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/maʊ̯/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Mao is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 60K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 60K
  • ESSpain1 in 60K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

5,565 people, 2010

Sources
334 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 60K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

another son of Wen Wang—the third, Mao Shu— was granted a different state, whose name is also pronounced Mao. Descendants adopted the name of this state as their surname. This character also means ‘thatched’ or ‘type of grass used in thatching’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Mao is read(measured from records)

Mao 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.

  • English44%

    Initialism of monoamine oxidase.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

    Polynesian: goddess of spring.

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • Chinese22%

    nonstandard spelling of māo

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • French8.1%

    initialism of monoamine oxydase; monoamine oxidase

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Mao 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.

Where Mao is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States5,5651 in 60K7.5KMao334
ES Spain8271 in 60K827Mao23
BR Brazil1761 in 1.2M176—1
AR Argentina1701 in 268K170——
SE Sweden1691 in 60K169—10
FI Finland891 in 63K89—6
NO Norway641 in 85K64—4

5,565 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Mao is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Argentina, Spain

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Maó, Ma-O, Mão, Máo, Mãō

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Mạo, Mão, Máo

  • Portuguese surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, China, Portugal

    Also written Mãö, Mäo, Màó, Mảo

  • a separate surname14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in China, United States, India, Canada

    Also written Máo, Mãō, Mạo, Maõ, Mâõ

68 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Mao is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • another son of Wen Wang—the third, Mao Shu— was granted a different state, whose name is also pronounced Mao. Descendants adopted the name of this state as their surname. This character also means ‘thatched’ or ‘type of grass used in thatching’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Spanish, Malvyna, Malvyne, Malvynya, Verdad, sinceridad

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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)

188019001920194019601980Mao Zedong, b. 1893Mao Zemin, b. 1896Mao Anying, b. 1922Mao Anqing, b. 1923Ho-Kwang Mao, b. 1941Mao Chi-kuo, b. 1948Claudia Mo, b. 1957Teresa Mo, b. 1960Mao Xinyu, b. 1970Mao Ning, b. 1972
  • Mao Zedongb. 1893CN1st chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founder of the People's Republic of China (1893–1976)
  • Mao Zeminb. 1896CNMao Zedong's brother (1896–1943)
  • Mao Anyingb. 1922CNChinese soldier, son of Chairman Mao Zedong of China (1922-1950)
  • Mao Anqingb. 1923CNChinese translator (1923-2007)
  • Ho-Kwang Maob. 1941USAmerican geologist, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science
  • Mao Chi-kuob. 1948TWTaiwanese politician
  • Claudia Mob. 1957GBnot in their usual nameHong Kong politician
  • Teresa Mob. 1960CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong actress
  • Mao Xinyub. 1970CNgrandson of former CCP Chairman Mao Zedong
  • Mao Ningb. 1972CNChinese politician and diplomat

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 66 sources across 36 countries.

Official registers attesting Mao
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020207.5K#4,588
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020105.6K#6,153
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004K#7,578
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—827#5,240
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—827#5,233
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—176#40,796
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—170—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—169#4,783
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—89#13,961
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—64#21,948

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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

Where does the name Mao come from?
another son of Wen Wang—the third, Mao Shu— was granted a different state, whose name is also pronounced Mao. Descendants adopted the name of this state as their surname. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Mao?
A machine transcription gives /maʊ̯/ (IPA) for English.
What does the name Mao mean?
In English, Initialism of monoamine oxidase.
What are other forms of the name Mao?
In the etymology graph, Ray is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Mao have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 5.6 thousand people named Mao, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mao.
Where is Mao most common?
Mao is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 60 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Mao?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,565 people named Mao in 2010, about 1 in 60 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Mao?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mao

The 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, “Mao”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mao parses inside a full name →