Theo
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Short form of }Theodore and, less commonly, of Theobald
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/to/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Theo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In the Netherlands it is the 69th most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 835(measured from records)
- FRFrance≈1 in 1.2K
- BRBrazil1 in 1.7K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 404 (measured from records)
- 1 in 835 (inferred from the name graph)
123,083 people, 2022
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Sweden
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
Short form of }Theodore and, less commonly, of Theobald.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Theo 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 | — | 123,083 | 1 in 1.7K | 123K | Theo | 125 |
| FR France | #125 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 127K | Theo | 353 |
| DE Germany | #385 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Theo | 179 |
| US United States | — | 15,942 | 1 in 21K | 15K | Theo | 404 |
| ZA South Africa | #640 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | — | Theo | 99 |
| SE Sweden | #511 | 12,216 | 1 in 835 | 12K | Theo | 59 |
| DK Denmark | — | 3,985 | 1 in 1.5K | 4K | Theo | 69 |
| NO Norway | — | 3,782 | 1 in 1.4K | 13K | Theo | 31 |
| NL Netherlands | #69 | 9 | 1 in 1.9M | 4.7K | Theo | 136 |
123,083 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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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)
Theo is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A male given name from Ancient Greek and nickname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Theo är ursprungligen en smekform till → Theodor. Det har varit ett av de populäraste namnen under 2000-talet. En känd namnbärare är artisten Theo (tidigare Theoz), egentligen Theodor Haraldsson, f. 2005. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 9 november.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In English, 'Thunderer'
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
English: short form of THEODORE and, less commonly, of THEOBALD .
as a word
In Indonesian, a Chinese Indonesian surname from Hokkien
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)
- Karl Weierstrassb. 1815DEnot in their usual nameGerman mathematician (1815–1897)
- Theodor Mommsenb. 1817DEnot in their usual nameGerman classical scholar and historian (1817–1903)
- Theodor Herzlb. 1860HUnot in their usual namefather of modern political Zionism (1860–1904)
- Theo van Doesburgb. 1883NLDutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer (1883–1931)
- Theodor Adornob. 1903DEnot in their usual nameGerman philosopher, sociologist and theorist (1903–1969)
- Theodor Seuss Geiselb. 1904USnot in their usual nameAmerican children's author and cartoonist (1904–1991)
- Heinrich Böllb. 1917DEnot in their usual nameGerman writer (1917–1985)
- Donna Stricklandb. 1959CAnot in their usual nameCanadian physicist, Nobel laurate
- Theo Walcottb. 1989GBEnglish association football player (born 1989)
- James, Earl of Wessexb. 2007GBnot in their usual nameson of Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh
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 116 sources across 62 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 123K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 122K | #265 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 75K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 15K | #1,829 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 13K | #342 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 12K | #338 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 8.6K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 5.3K | #1,257 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 4.8K | #3,461 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4K | #150 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 3.9K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 3.8K | — |
Reference works 3
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- What are other forms of the name Theo?
- In the etymology graph, Ted, Teodoro and Teddy are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Theodore and Theodorus.
- Is Theo a male or female name?
- Theo 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 Theo have the most bearers?
- In Brazil, the national register counted about 123 thousand people named Theo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled theo.
- Where is Theo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Theo is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 835 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Theo mean, and where does it come from?
- Short form of }Theodore and, less commonly, of Theobald. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- How common is the name Theo?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 123,083 people named Theo in 2022, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Theo compared with other names?
- In the Netherlands, Theo is the 69th most common given name of 101,916 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Theo?
- A machine transcription gives /to/ (IPA) for French.
What do you want to know about Theo?
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/theoThe 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, “Theo” — the 69th most common given name in Netherlands. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.