Theodor
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Danish: a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Theodore
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Theodor is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Jamaica it is the 22nd most common given name.
- SESweden1 in 824(measured from records)
- DEGermany≈1 in 2.9K
- NLNetherlands1 in 131as Theodorus
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Theodor itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #842 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 533 (measured from records)
- 1 in 824 (inferred from the name graph)
141,175 named Theodore, 2020
of 15M given names
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:
Locally spelled Theodore in US United States, GB United Kingdom, IT Italy and 2 more, Theodorus in NL Netherlands and Theodoros in CY Cyprus.
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)
a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Theodore
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Theodor is read(measured from records)
Theodor is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- German62%
männl. Vom. griechischen Ur sprungs (zu griech. theos »Gott« und döron »Geschenk, Gabe«, also »Gottesgeschenk«).
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
from Greek Theodoros 'gift of God'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
- English16%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Theodor in English.
- Danish8.7%
a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Theodore
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)
Theodor 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #342 | 141,175as Theodore | 1 in 2.4K | 141K | Theodore | 533 |
| NL Netherlands | #568 | 131,561as Theodorus | 1 in 131 | 131K | Theodorus | 80 |
| DE Germany | #374 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Theodor | 160 |
| GB United Kingdom | #425 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 2.8K | Theodore | 202 |
| IT Italy | #692 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 10 | Theodore | 38 |
| SE Sweden | #992 | 12,377 | 1 in 824 | 12K | Theodor | 54 |
| NO Norway | — | 5,460 | 1 in 1K | 20K | Theodor | 33 |
| DK Denmark | — | 4,020 | 1 in 1.5K | 4K | Theodore | 32 |
| CY Cyprus | #143 | 2,672as Θεοδωρος | 1 in 474 | 2.7K | Theodoros | 71 |
| JM Jamaica | #22 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Theodore | 12 |
141,175 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); 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); ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); CYSTAT — Name frequency (2011 Population Census). 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)
Theodor 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 French, Variante de Théodore, du grec theodoros, « don de Dieu ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- E. T. A. Hoffmannb. 1776DEnot in their usual nameGerman Romantic author (1776–1822)
- Karl Weierstrassb. 1815DEnot in their usual nameGerman mathematician (1815–1897)
- Theodor Mommsenb. 1817DEGerman classical scholar and historian (1817–1903)
- Emil Kocherb. 1841CHnot in their usual namesurgeon, laureate of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Medicine (1841-1917)
- Theodor Herzlb. 1860HUfather of modern political Zionism (1860–1904)
- Vsevolod Meyerholdb. 1874RUnot in their usual nameRussian theatre director (1874–1940)
- Theodor Svedbergb. 1884SESwedish chemist (1884-1971)
- Theodor Adornob. 1903DEGerman philosopher, sociologist and theorist (1903–1969)
- Theodor Seuss Geiselb. 1904USAmerican children's author and cartoonist (1904–1991)
- Heinrich Böllb. 1917DEnot in their usual nameGerman writer (1917–1985)
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 83 sources across 37 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 20K | #228 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 12K | #335 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 5.9K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 5.5K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 4K | #149 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #8,706 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 538 | #3,054 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 276 | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2024 | 258 | #23 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 76 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 20 | #19,170 |
| IT Italy | ISTAT — Contanomi newborn per-name series (1999–2024, JSONP backend) | 2024 | 10 | #895 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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
- In which country does Theodor have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 141 thousand people named Theodore, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Theodor most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Theodor is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 824 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- What does the name Theodor mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name from Ancient Greek, equivalent to English Theodore Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Theodor?
- In the etymology graph, Theodore, Ted and Teodoro are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Theodor a male or female name?
- Theodor 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 Theodor?
- In Sweden, the national register counted 12,377 people named Theodor, about 1 in 824 residents.
- How common is Theodor compared with other names?
- In the United States, Theodor is the 342nd most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Theodor?
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/theodorThe 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, “Theodor” — the 342nd most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.