Payao
surname · Latin script
Meaning: A raft used to attract and catch fish in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/peɪaʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Payao is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 61K(inferred from the name graph)
- BRBrazil1 in 400K
- IDIndonesia≈1 in 407K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 39 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 61K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,800 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Philippines, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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)
A raft used to attract and catch fish in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Payao 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 61K | — | Payao | 27 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 407K | — | Payao | 3 |
| BR Brazil | 529 | 1 in 400K | 529 | Payao | 30 |
| US United States | ≈32 est. | ≈1 in 10M | listed | Payao | 39 |
| FR France | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 2.9M | 9 | — | — |
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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); the us-wru-surnames-voterfile register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Payao 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 Cebuano, a surname from Cebuano
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)
- Fortunato Payaob. 1940Filipino gymnast
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 6 sources across 5 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 529 | #16,199 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 9 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 4 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 3 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 3 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1911 | — | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Payao mean, and where does it come from?
- A raft used to attract and catch fish in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Payao?
- A machine transcription gives /peɪaʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Payao have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.8 thousand people named Payao in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled payao.
- How common is the name Payao?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 529 people named Payao, about 1 in 400 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Payao?
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/payaoThe 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, “Payao”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.