Waldo

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: Germanic hypocoristic from wald ‘rule, power’

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Waldo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bolivia than in any other country, where it is the 53rd most common given name.

rarermore common
  • BOBolivia≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • CLChile≈1 in 4.5K
  • PEPeru≈1 in 14K

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.

Bolivia (inferred from the name graph)

≈4,600 people, est.

Sources
208 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Bolivia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Germanic hypocoristic from wald ‘rule, power’.

Sources 1

  • Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios

How Waldo is read(measured from records)

Waldo is one spelling over 2 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.

  • Spanish54%

    Germanic hypocoristic from wald ‘rule, power’.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • English33%

    short form of names with Wal-; also a saint's name

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

    Synonym of telefactor.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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

Waldo 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 Waldo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BO Bolivia#53≈4,600 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Waldo39
CL Chile#448≈4,100 est.≈1 in 4.5K4Waldo89
AR Argentina#976≈2,900 est.≈1 in 16K5Waldo66
US United States—2,6081 in 128K4.7KWaldo208
PE Peru—≈2,200 est.≈1 in 14K—Waldo53
PR Puerto Rico—≈210 est.≈1 in 15K5—16

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: RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SSA Baby Names — Puerto Rico (state file PR.txt). 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)

Waldo is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Philippines

    Languages: English, Dutch, Norwegian

    Also written Waldö

  • German given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, South Africa, United Kingdom

    Languages: German, English

    Also written Waldoe, Wâldoe, Wâldö

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Waldö

61 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)

Waldo is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In German, short form from Wald- or Wall-; also related to Ewald

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, from ONs Luckau and Lübben

    as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

  • In German, ) Walto: männl. Vom., verselbst­ ständigte Kurzform von Namen, die mit »Wald[e]-« oder »-wald« gebildet sind.

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

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)

18001850190019502000Ralph Waldo Emerson, b. 1803Waldo P. Johnson, b. 1817Waldo Semon, b. 1898Mark Zemansky, b. 1900Johnny Green, b. 1908Waldo Salt, b. 1914Waldo R. Tobler, b. 1930Waldo L. Parra, b. 1965Waldo Ponce, b. 1982Waldo Rubio Martín, b. 1995

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 53 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Waldo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20202.6K#6,208
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202018#6,208
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)20256—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)19216—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present)20165#3,683
PR Puerto RicoSSA Baby Names — Puerto Rico (state file PR.txt)20025#479
CL ChileSRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021)20214—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror)20102—
AR Argentinadatos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015)20121—

Reference works 5

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 Waldo mean, and where does it come from?
Germanic hypocoristic from wald ‘rule, power’. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
Is Waldo a male or female name?
Waldo 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 Waldo have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 4.6 thousand people named Waldo in Bolivia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled waldo.
How common is the name Waldo?
In the United States, the national register counted 2,608 people named Waldo in 2020, about 1 in 128 thousand residents.
How common is Waldo compared with other names?
In Bolivia, Waldo is the 53rd most common given name of 14,891 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Waldo?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Waldo” — the 53rd most common given name in Bolivia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Waldo parses inside a full name →