Dao
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Vietnamese: Given name of Chinese origin; cited as the name of Lê Thái Tông’s wife and mother of Lê Thánh Tông
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/jaw˧˧/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Dao is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- AUAustralia≈1 in 19K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 25K
- USUnited States1 in 30K
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 352 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈39,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Côte d’Ivoire, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Given name of Chinese origin; cited as the name of Lê Thái Tông’s wife and mother of Lê Thánh Tông.
Sources 1
- Tên Họ Người Việt Nam
How Dao is read(measured from records)
Dao 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.
- Vietnamese66%
Given name of Chinese origin; cited as the name of Lê Thái Tông’s wife and mother of Lê Thánh Tông.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
knife
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English19%
Any of various traditional Chinese swords with a curved, single-edged blade, primarily used for slashing and chopping.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Dao 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 35K | — | Dao | 18 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 6.1K | — | 1 |
| US United States | 11,211 | 1 in 30K | 14K | Dao | 352 |
| FR France | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 33K | 192 | — | 7 |
| ML Mali | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 3 | — | 10 |
| CA Canada | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 25K | — | Dao | 121 |
| AU Australia | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 1 | Dao | 144 |
| NO Norway | 324 | 1 in 17K | 324 | — | 9 |
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; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Dao 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 Filipino, dao tree (Dracontomelon dao)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Chinese, nonstandard spelling of dāo
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In nkr, spear; branch of, part of
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- Đào Nguyên Phổb. 1861VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese politician, journalist and writer (1861-1908)
- Đào Duy Anhb. 1904VNnot in their usual namelexicographer (1904–1988)
- Joseph Daob. 1936MLRoman Catholic bishop (1936–2011)
- Đào Trọng Thib. 1951VNnot in their usual nameVietnamese politician
- Bernadette Sanou Daob. 1952MLBurkinabé writer
- Lassina Daob. 1971CIIvorian footballer
- Đào Mạnh Thắngb. 1989VNnot in their usual namebadminton player
- Ben Aziz Daob. 1999BFBurkinabé footballer
- Elyess Daob. 2006FRMoroccan association football player
- Will Daoactor
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 14K | #2,555 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 11K | #3,220 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.2K | #3,994 |
| CI Côte d’Ivoire | nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies | — | 6.1K | #96 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 324 | #4,661 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 192 | — |
| ML Mali | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 3 | #63 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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 surname 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 does the name Dao mean, and where does it come from?
- Given name of Chinese origin; cited as the name of Lê Thái Tông’s wife and mother of Lê Thánh Tông. Recorded by Tên Họ Người Việt Nam.
- How do you pronounce Dao?
- A machine transcription gives /jaw˧˧/ (IPA) for Vietnamese.
- In which country does Dao have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 39 thousand people named Dao in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled dao.
- How common is the name Dao?
- In the United States, the national register counted 11,211 people named Dao in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Dao?
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/daoThe 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, “Dao”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.