Leo

118,356 people in America carry this name — ranked #478 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation Alpha.

Say it LEE oh

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

L IY1 OW0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 118,356 2020 Census
  • Rank #478 Common
  • Per 100,000 39.2 about 1 in 2,800 people
  • As a surname 8,092 ranked #4,233 the other way round

Where Leo comes from and what it means

Greek in origin, reading literally as “lion”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Leo has been given

221,567 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2019, with 7,501 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Leo

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Leo Larry — same opening
  • Leo Luis — same opening
  • Leo Logan — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

On the way up

Leo is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Boys or girls: who is called Leo?

99.4% men
734 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 60.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 6.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 21.5%
  • Two or more races — 4.1%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 6.8%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Same syllables and stress as Leo

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Spellings of Leo

Leo is how 59% of them spell it — 199,353 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Greek origin