Masao
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘Correct man’
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Siseministeerium, 2023
Masao is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country.
- JPJapan≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- EEEstonia≈1 in 230K
- CACanada≈1 in 270Kfew records
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 143 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈51,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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)‘Correct man’.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Masao 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 | #413 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | listed | Masao | 128 |
| AO Angola | — | ≈750 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Masao | 1 |
| US United States | — | 418 | 1 in 796K | 414 | Masao | 143 |
| BR Brazil | — | 189 | 1 in 1.1M | 271 | — | 1 |
| CA Canada | — | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 267K | — | Masao | 23 |
| PY Paraguay | — | ≈34 est. | ≈1 in 211K | — | Masao | 7 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈5 est. | ≈1 in 235K | listed | — | 3 |
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).
Notable people with this name
(measured from records)- Masao Kogab. 1904JPJapanese musician (1904–1978)
- Masao Mishimab. 1906JPJapanese actor (1906-1973)
- Masao Shimizub. 1908JPJapanese actor
- Masao Takemotob. 1919JPJapanese artistic gymnast (1919–2007)
- Masao Kawaib. 1924JPJapanese zoologist, children's writer, doctor of science (1924–2021)
- Masao Itōb. 1928JPmedical neuroscientist in Japan
- Masao Kunihirob. 1930JPEnglish interpreter, Japanese politician
- Masao Maruyamab. 1941JPJapanese animator
- Masao Komatsub. 1942JPJapanese comedian, actor (1942-2020)
- Masao Yoshidab. 1955JPPlant manager during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)25 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 414 | #23,426 |
| BR Brazil | Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA) | — | 271 | #9,423 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 225 | #23,605 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 189 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 187 | #26,468 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1950 | 137 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1918 | 81 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 1940 | 79 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1922 | 68 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1919 | 63 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1917 | 61 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1921 | 60 | — |
Reference works 3
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wikipedia given-name 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
- What does the name Masao mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘Correct man’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
- Is Masao a male or female name?
- Masao is a male name. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020) and Brazil (Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA)).
- In which country does Masao have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 51 thousand people named Masao in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled masao.
- How common is the name Masao?
- In the United States, the national register counted 418 people named Masao in 2020, about 1 in 796 thousand residents.
- How common is Masao compared with other names?
- In Japan, Masao is the 413th most common given name of 366,905 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Masao?
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/masaoThe 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, “Masao” — the 413th most common given name in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.