Isao
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Merit’; ‘honour’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Isao is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country.
- JPJapan≈1 in 2K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.1M
- EEEstonia≈1 in 70K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 134 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈63,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘Merit’; ‘honour’.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Isao 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #339 | ≈63,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | listed | Isao | 119 |
| CN China | — | ≈4,300 est. | ≈1 in 323K | — | Isao | 10 |
| US United States | — | 314 | 1 in 1.1M | 311 | Isao | 134 |
| BR Brazil | — | 210 | 1 in 1M | 293 | — | — |
| CA Canada | — | ≈100 est. | ≈1 in 362K | — | Isao | 24 |
| SG Singapore | — | ≈21 est. | ≈1 in 292K | — | Isao | 8 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈17 est. | ≈1 in 70K | listed | — | 4 |
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: the japanese-names-oneill-1972 register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); the ee-siseministeerium-registry register. 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)
Isao is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Southern Sotho, next year
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Isao Yamagatab. 1915GBJapanese actor (1915–1996)
- Isao Kimurab. 1923JPJapanese actor (1923-1981)
- Isao Tomitab. 1932JPJapanese musician (1932-2016)
- Isao Suzukib. 1933JPJapanese jazz bassist, composer, arranger, bandmaster (1933–2022)
- Isao Takahatab. 1935JPJapanese animator, animation director, director, producer (1935-2018)
- Isao Natsuyagib. 1939JPJapanese actor (1939-2013)
- Isao Harimotob. 1940JPSouth Korean-Japanese former professional baseball player, baseball critic, baseball commentator (1940-)
- Isao Sasakib. 1942JPJapanese singer, actor, voice actor (1942-)
- Isao Okanob. 1944JPJapanese judoka
- Tarcisio Isao Kikuchib. 1958JPJapanese archbishop
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 26 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 311 | #28,553 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 293 | #8,955 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 265 | #21,274 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 210 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 208 | #24,540 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1950 | 161 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1940 | 93 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1940 | 68 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1950 | 49 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 1930 | 37 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1930 | 31 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1925 | 20 | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
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 Isao mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Merit’; ‘honour’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Isao a male or female name?
- Isao 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 Isao have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 63 thousand people named Isao in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled isao.
- How common is the name Isao?
- In the United States, the national register counted 314 people named Isao in 2020, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
- How common is Isao compared with other names?
- In Japan, Isao is the 339th most common given name of 366,905 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Isao?
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/isaoThe 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, “Isao” — the 339th most common given name in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.