Ba-O

surname · Latin script

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

Ba-O is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Vao, from vao (“ford”), from Latin vadum.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 43K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 22K
  • ISIceland1 in 27K

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)

7,814 people, 2020

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
300 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 22K (inferred from the name graph)

Sweden

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Bao in US United States, AO Angola, PL Poland.

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)

From Vao, from vao (“ford”), from Latin vadum.

Sources 4

  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)
  • Nordic Names
  • Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (2007)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ba-O 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 Ba-O is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—7,8141 in 43K5.3KBao300
SE Sweden—4701 in 22K470—13
FI Finland—1691 in 33K398—5
DK Denmark—881 in 67K49—1
PL Poland—431 in 890K28Bao1
IS Iceland—131 in 27K13——
AO Angola#741———Bao3

7,814 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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); dane.gov.pl — PESEL given names (first + second name position, 2026-01-20); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); Þjóðskrá Íslands — Name frequencies (NafnTíðni, registry). 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)

Ba-O is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish given name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Bao, Bảo, Báo, Bão, Båo

  • French given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, China, Belgium

    Also written Bao, Bảo, Báo, Bão

9 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Ba-O under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Ba-O mean, and where does it come from?
From Vao, from vao (“ford”), from Latin vadum. Recorded by Wiktionary and Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2) and 2 other sources.
In which country does Ba-O have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 7.8 thousand people named Ba-O, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bao.
Where is Ba-O most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ba-O is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 22 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ba-O?
In the United States, the national register counted 7,814 people named Ba-O in 2020, about 1 in 43 thousand residents.
How common is Ba-O compared with other names?
In Angola, Ba-O is the 741st most common given name of 11,132 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ba-O?

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

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, “Ba-O” — the 741st most common given name in Angola. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ba-O parses inside a full name →