Neo

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: Initialism of near-Earth object

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

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

Neo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa≈1 in 1.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • SGSingapore≈1 in 4.4K
  • MYMalaysia≈1 in 17K

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.

South Africa (inferred from the name graph)

≈39,000 people, est.

Sources
220 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)

South Africa, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Initialism of near-Earth object.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

How Neo is read(measured from records)

Neo is one spelling over 4 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • English41%

    Initialism of near-Earth object.

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

  • French6.7%

    Origine grecque, signifie « nouveau ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Spanish6.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Neo in Spanish.

  • Malay6.2%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Neo in Malay.

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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

Neo 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 Neo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#328≈39,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K—Neo88
SE Sweden—4,9061 in 2.1K4.9KNeo24
MY Malaysia—≈1,900 est.≈1 in 17K—Neo69
US United States—1,9351 in 172K1.8KNeo220
SG Singapore#441≈1,400 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Neo150
FI Finland—1,0671 in 5.2K1.1K—5
SI Slovenia—1541 in 14K159—2

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: Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)

Neo is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Philippines, Mexico, United States

    Languages: French, Spanish

    Also written Néo, Nèo, Nëö, Nêo, Nëô

  • Portuguese given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, South Africa, United States, Philippines

    Also written Néo, Nėö, Nẻo, Nèo

  • Finnish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Sweden, Finland, South Africa

    Also written Neö

  • Indonesian given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Philippines

    Also written Néo

  • Croatian given name9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, South Africa, Bulgaria

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Нео

67 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)

Neo is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, Neo kommer från grekiskans néos som betyder ’ny; ung’. Enstaka namnbärare fanns under 1800-talet, men namnet blev populärt betydligt senare, troligen med stöd av filmen Matrix (1999, med uppföljare 2003 och 2021) där huvudpersonen bär namnet. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 12 september.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

  • In German, männl. Vom., Kurzform von Ireneo, der italienischen Form von

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • Act of God; free gift.

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In Esperanto, a no; an expression or vote of negation or opposition

    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)

1960198020002020Neo Rauch, b. 1960Neo Yau, b. 1990Neo Morojele, b. 2000shelovesneo, b. 2001Thomas Neo Gatdula, b. 2003

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 88 sources across 45 countries.

Official registers attesting Neo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010237#80,131
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020204#95,802
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000131#121,780
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—21#42,102

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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

Is Neo a male or female name?
Neo 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.
What does the name Neo mean, and where does it come from?
Initialism of near-Earth object. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Neo have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 39 thousand people named Neo in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled neo.
How do you pronounce Neo?
A machine transcription gives /niːəʊ/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Neo?
In Sweden, the national register counted 4,906 people named Neo, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
How common is Neo compared with other names?
In South Africa, Neo is the 328th most common given name of 189,620 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Neo?

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/neo

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, “Neo” — the 328th most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Neo parses inside a full name →