Jo
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘castle’. The same character is also pronounced Shiro
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/dʒəʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Jo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Cape Verde it is the 91st most common given name.
- BEBelgium≈1 in 1.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- AUAustralia≈1 in 1.4K
- NZNew Zealand≈1 in 1.5K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #576 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 549 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.4K (inferred from the name graph)
57,903 people, 2020
of 15M given names
Highest-authority source
Belgium, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘castle’. The same character is also pronounced Shiro. A noble family in Echigo (now Niigata prefecture) named Jo was descended from the Taira clan. Another name pronounced similarly, written with the character meaning ‘emotion’, is found in Okinawa.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Jo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #250 | 57,903 | 1 in 5.7K | 55K | Jo | 549 |
| GB United Kingdom | #259 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 4 | Jo | 334 |
| PH Philippines | #644 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Jo | 134 |
| AU Australia | #226 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 3 | Jo | 234 |
| CA Canada | #287 | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 4K | 1 | Jo | 211 |
| BE Belgium | #446 | ≈8,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | 7 | Jo | 125 |
| NZ New Zealand | #161 | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 10 | Jo | 145 |
| NO Norway | #448 | 2,271 | 1 in 2.4K | 6.4K | Jo | 92 |
| CV Cape Verde | #91 | ≈200 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Jo | 6 |
57,903 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; NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present); Australian national given names (aggregated state BDM); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present); SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population 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)
Jo is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Darling, sweetheart.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Hebrew; God shall add; nickname
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
nickname from jo ‘good’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
variant of Cho.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In sit-pro, blame, suspect
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
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)
- Jo Van Fleetb. 1915USAmerican actress (1915-1996)
- Mary Jo Catlettb. 1938USAmerican actress
- Raquel Welchb. 1940USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress (1940–2023)
- Adrienne Barbeaub. 1945USnot in their usual nameAmerican actress
- Debra Jo Ruppb. 1951USAmerican actress
- Belinda Carlisleb. 1958USnot in their usual nameAmerican singer
- Wendie Jo Sperberb. 1958USAmerican actress (1958–2005)
- Jo Nesbøb. 1960NONorwegian novelist, musician and economist
- Amy Jo Johnsonb. 1970USAmerican actress
- Jeanette J. Eppsb. 1970USnot in their usual nameAmerican aerospace engineer and NASA astronaut (born 1970)
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 72 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 55K | #818 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 6.4K | #556 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 3K | #818 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 2.3K | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 74 | #9,410 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 36 | — |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navn (1880–present) | 2025 | 11 | — |
| NZ New Zealand | DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present) | 1959 | 10 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 8 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2021 | 6 | — |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Prénoms nouveau-nés (newborns) | 2002 | 6 | #1,056 |
| GB United Kingdom | NRS — Baby names Scotland full list (1974–present) | 2010 | 4 | #666 |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Is Jo a male or female name?
- Jo is a female 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.
- What are other forms of the name Jo?
- In the etymology graph, Janet, Kim and Joe are forms of the same name in other languages; Jolene, Jojo and Joleen are recorded short or pet forms; it is recorded as a short form of Josephine and Jochen.
- Where does the name Jo come from?
- ‘castle’. The same character is also pronounced Shiro. A noble family in Echigo (now Niigata prefecture) named Jo was descended from the Taira clan. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How common is the name Jo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 57,903 people named Jo in 2020, about 1 in 5.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Jo compared with other names?
- In the United States, Jo is the 250th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Jo?
- A machine transcription gives /dʒəʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- What does the name Jo mean?
- Recorded meaning: ‘castle’. The same character is also pronounced Shiro.
- In which country does Jo have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 58 thousand people named Jo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled jo.
What do you want to know about Jo?
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/joThe 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, “Jo” — the 250th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.