Rato
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: mouse
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Rato is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- LYLibya≈1 in 56K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 87K
- HRCroatia1 in 264K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Rato itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 83 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 56K (inferred from the name graph)
≈650 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Libya, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Rutu in US United States, NZ New Zealand and Rata in BD Bangladesh.
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)
mouse
Sources 1
- A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Rato is read(measured from records)
Rato is one spelling over 5 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Portuguese32%
mouse
as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
rat (any rodent of the genus Rattus)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish22%
a while, bit (a short period of time)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English16%
Alternative form of RATO (“rocket-assisted takeoff”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Rato in French.
- Indonesian5.1%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Rato in Indonesian.
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Rato 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 87K | — | Rato | 5 |
| US United States | 173as Rutu | 1 in 1.9M | 206 | Rutu | 83 |
| LY Libya | ≈120 est. | ≈1 in 56K | — | Rato | 1 |
| BD Bangladesh | ≈96 est. | ≈1 in 1.7M | — | Rata | 8 |
| BR Brazil | ≈84 est. | ≈1 in 2.5M | 400 | — | — |
| HR Croatia | 16 | 1 in 264K | 61 | — | 13 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈8 est. | ≈1 in 609K | 10 | Rutu | 5 |
| FI Finland | ≈6 est. | ≈1 in 926K | 40 | — | — |
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); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); DIA — Baby name popularity (1900–present). 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)
Rato is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, dative/ablative masculine/neuter singular of ratus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In mnb, arrive, come; reach, arrive at something
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
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)
- José Moreira Ratob. 1860PTPortuguese sculptor (1860–1937)
- Rodrigo Ratob. 1949ESSpanish politician
- Rafael Ratob. 1983BRBrazilian association football player
- Rita Ratob. 1983PTPortuguese politician of the 3rd republic
- Oliver Rato Paloiob. 1985PTPortuguese footballer
- Bruno Ratob. 1986BRBrazilian association football player
- Mattia Ratob. 2005ITItalian motorcycle racer
- Febtria Rato PutriFRbadminton player
- Ana RatoPTresearcher
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 400 | #20,732 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, voter-file supplement (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Rato mean, and where does it come from?
- mouse Recorded by A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese.
- In which country does Rato have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 646 people named Rato in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rato.
- How common is the name Rato?
- In Croatia, the national register counted 16 people named Rato in 2021, about 1 in 264 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Rato?
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/ratoThe 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, “Rato”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.