Garbo
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Either from the via del Garbo in Florence or from an Italian nickname meaning 'polite, kind'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈɡɑɹboʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Garbo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 13K(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 193K
- ITItaly≈1 in 44K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 74 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 13K (inferred from the name graph)
≈8,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Either from the via del Garbo in Florence or from an Italian nickname meaning 'polite, kind'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Garbo is read(measured from records)
Garbo is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English54%
Either from the via del Garbo in Florence or from an Italian nickname meaning 'polite, kind'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A rubbish collector; a garbage man.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish26%
grace
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese6.9%
grace, style, chic, elegance
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Garbo 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈8,400 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Garbo | 40 |
| IT Italy | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 44K | listed | Garbo | 21 |
| BR Brazil | 1,096 | 1 in 193K | 1.1K | Garbo | 45 |
| US United States | 499 | 1 in 667K | 500 | Garbo | 74 |
| CU Cuba | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 81K | — | Garbo | 3 |
| NO Norway | 38 | 1 in 144K | 38 | — | 1 |
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the xinhua-italian-manual register; SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population). 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)
Garbo is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Italian, 1. apparently a nickname from Italian garbo ‘polite’, ‘kind’; ‘kindness’, ‘graciousness’; or alternatively from the same word in Venetian dialect meaning ‘curt’, ‘abrupt’. 2. Sicilian variant of Galbo. SSHUnSESThe medieval Florentine doctors Dino and Tommaso Garbo took their surname from the via del Garbo in Florence.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Italian, graciousness, pleasing manners. 2. from the name of a street in Florence, the via del Garbo, which was populated mainly by workers in lana del Garbo wool from the Algarve in Portugal, Garbo being the It. name of the Algarve. The famous medieval Florentine doctors Dino and Tommaso Garbo are known to have taken their name from the via del Garbo in Florence.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
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)
- Ingvald Garbob. 1891NONorwegian resistance member (1891-1941)
- Alva Garbob. 1903SESwedish actor (1903-1926)
- Greta Garbob. 1905SESwedish-American actress (1905–1990)
- Giovanni Garbob. 1912ITItalian association football player
- Norman Garbob. 1919USAmerican writer
- Gunnar Garbob. 1924NONorwegian politician (1924-2016)
- Ingrid Garbob. 1939DEGerman Vedette (1939–2017)
- Jens GarboNOLawyer from Norway
- Giuseppe Garboresearcher
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 29 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #8,528 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 500 | #45,998 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 499 | #43,285 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 485 | #42,134 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 38 | #30,917 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- 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
- What does the name Garbo mean, and where does it come from?
- Either from the via del Garbo in Florence or from an Italian nickname meaning 'polite, kind'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Garbo?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɑɹboʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Garbo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 8.4 thousand people named Garbo in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled garbo.
- How common is the name Garbo?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,096 people named Garbo, about 1 in 193 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Garbo?
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/garboThe 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, “Garbo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.