Tervo
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tervo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Finland than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Probably shortened from Tervonen; as a place name, possibly named after an early settler.
- FIFinland1 in 928(measured from records)
- SESweden1 in 65K
- NONorway1 in 683K
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 Tervo 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.
- Finland (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 58 (measured from records)
- 1 in 928 (inferred from the name graph)
6,003 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Finland
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Терво in FI Finland, RU Russia.
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)
Probably shortened from Tervonen; as a place name, possibly named after an early settler. Ultimately from terva (“tar”), which may also be more directly the source of the place name, as there is a place named Tervamäki (literally “tar hill”) nearby (i.e. a hill where tar was burned).
Sources 1
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Tervo 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | 6,003 | 1 in 928 | 6K | Терво | 6 |
| US United States | 416 | 1 in 800K | 468 | — | 3 |
| SE Sweden | 156 | 1 in 65K | 156 | — | — |
| RU Russia | ≈66 est. | ≈1 in 2.2M | — | Терво | 58 |
| NO Norway | 8 | 1 in 683K | 8 | — | — |
6,003 people counted by DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup), counting the spelling tervo. 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: DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Agnes Pakkalab. 1863FInot in their usual nameFinnish writer
- Penna Tervob. 1901FIFinnish politician
- Kari Tervob. 1950FIFinnish journalist
- Timo Tervob. 1950FIFinnish physician and professor
- Hannu Tervob. 1952FIFinnish economist (*1952)
- Kati Tervob. 1954FIFinnish writer
- Jari Tervob. 1959FIFinnish writer and television personality
- Miia Tervob. 1980FIFinnish film director and screenwriter
- Tommi Tervob. 1984FIFinnish ice hockey player
- Krista Tervob. 1997FIFinnish hammer thrower
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 15 sources across 7 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 6K | #306 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Sukunimitilasto (Finnish surnames register) | — | 2.8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 468 | #48,712 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 416 | #50,275 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 392 | #50,178 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 156 | #5,085 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 8 | #60,587 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname 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 Tervo mean, and where does it come from?
- Probably shortened from Tervonen; as a place name, possibly named after an early settler. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Tervo have the most bearers?
- In Finland, the national register counted about 6.0 thousand people named Tervo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled терво.
- Where is Tervo most common?
- Tervo is densest in Finland, where the national register counts about 1 in 928 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Tervo?
- In Finland, the national register counted 6,003 people named Tervo, about 1 in 928 residents.
What do you want to know about Tervo?
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/tervoThe 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, “Tervo”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.