Ma-O

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Ma-O is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Mandarin 毛 (Máo).

rarermore common
  • USUnited States1 in 60K(measured from records)
  • SESweden1 in 60K
  • ESSpain1 in 60K

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)

5,565 people, 2010

Sources
334 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 60K (inferred from the name graph)

United States

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mao in US United States, ES Spain.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Borrowed from Mandarin 毛 (Máo).

Sources 6

  • 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 국립국어원 외래어 표기 용례 자료 (NIKL loanword/foreign-name transcription examples)
  • Wiktionary
  • Chinese Surnames Encyclopedia (Section 2)

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ma-O 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 Ma-O is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States5,5651 in 60K7.5KMao334
ES Spain8271 in 60K827Mao23
BR Brazil1761 in 1.2M176—1
AR Argentina1701 in 268K170——
SE Sweden1691 in 60K169—10
FI Finland891 in 63K89—6
NO Norway641 in 85K64—4

5,565 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 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ma-O is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname21 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Argentina, Spain

    Languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Mao, Maó, Mão, Máo, Mãō

  • Hindi surname137 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Thailand, United States, Indonesia

    Languages: Hindi, Thai, Indonesian

    Also written Mau, Mao, เมา, เม้า, เมาท์

4 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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Ma-O under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Ma-O mean, and where does it come from?
Borrowed from Mandarin 毛 (Máo). Recorded by 25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado and Dictionary of American Family Names and 4 other sources.
In which country does Ma-O have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 5.6 thousand people named Ma-O, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mao.
Where is Ma-O most common?
Ma-O is densest in the United States, where the national register counts about 1 in 60 thousand people carrying it.
How common is the name Ma-O?
In the United States, the national register counted 5,565 people named Ma-O in 2010, about 1 in 60 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Ma-O?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

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, “Ma-O”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ma-O parses inside a full name →