Goto

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Any construct which produces an unstructured jump in the flow of execution

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/ˈɡoʊˌtu/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Goto is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 101K(measured from records)
  • BRBrazil1 in 105K
  • FIFinland1 in 139K

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)

3,302 people, 2010

Sources
210 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 101K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

‘later wisteria’, indicating descendants of the Fujiwara clan through various branches. This name occurs chiefly along the southeastern seaboard of Japan and in the Ryukyu Islands.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

How Goto is read(measured from records)

Goto is one spelling over 4 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.

  • Japanese58%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Goto in Japanese.

  • English22%

    Any construct which produces an unstructured jump in the flow of execution.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Portuguese9.0%

    glottis

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Spanish5.6%

    goto (Filipino beef tripe and rice gruel)

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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

Goto 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 Goto is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States3,3021 in 101K4.7KGoto210
BR Brazil2,0161 in 105K2K—3
FI Finland401 in 139K40——
AR Argentina341 in 1.3M34——
PL Poland271 in 1.4M16—1
SE Sweden201 in 510K20——
NO Norway181 in 304K18—2

3,302 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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 2000; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames). 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)

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

  • Portuguese surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Peru, Venezuela

    Languages: Portuguese, Spanish

    Also written Gotō, Gotô

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Gotô, Gotō

  • Hindi surname4 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Gotō, Gotô

54 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)

Goto 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.

  • ‘later wisteria’, indicating descendants of the Fujiwara clan through various branches. This name occurs chiefly along the southeastern seaboard of Japan and in the Ryukyu Islands.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • Sólida

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • In mnv, inside, interior, center; lagoon inside the reef; thought, intelligence; to think, want, desire

    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)

18001850190019502000Shōjirō Gotō, b. 1838Gotō Shinpei, b. 1857Fumio Gotō, b. 1884Hirohito Gotō, b. 1969Midori Gotō, b. 1971Kumiko Goto, b. 1974Hirooki Goto, b. 1979Mariko Gotō, b. 1982Maki Goto, b. 1985Yūki Gotō, b. 1986

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)

FormalGoto様Dear Goto-san, (English)
Informalこんにちは、GotoさんHello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 27 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Goto
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020004.7K#6,639
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020103.3K#9,803
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—2K#4,830
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020201.7K#16,290
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—40#27,537
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—34—
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—20#25,536
NO NorwaySSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population)—18#45,339
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202616—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—16#101,902
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames)202611—
PL Polanddane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names)—11#126,294

Reference works 5

  • 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)
  • 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

Where does the name Goto come from?
‘later wisteria’, indicating descendants of the Fujiwara clan through various branches. This name occurs chiefly along the southeastern seaboard of Japan and in the Ryukyu Islands. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Goto?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɡoʊˌtu/ (IPA) for Japanese.
What does the name Goto mean?
In English, Any construct which produces an unstructured jump in the flow of execution.
In which country does Goto have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 3.3 thousand people named Goto, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled goto.
Where is Goto most common?
Goto is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 101 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Goto?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,302 people named Goto in 2010, about 1 in 101 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Goto?

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

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, “Goto”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Goto parses inside a full name →