Cato
surname · Latin script
Meaning: (i) A different form of Catto; (ii) anglicization of Spanish Cato, from a personal name perhaps inspired by the Roman statesman Cato
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/keɪtoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cato is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 40K(measured from records)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 45K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 105K
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 Cato 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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 350 (measured from records)
- 1 in 337 (inferred from the name graph)
8,298 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
St. Vincent & Grenadines
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
(i) A different form of Catto; (ii) anglicization of Spanish Cato, from a personal name perhaps inspired by the Roman statesman Cato.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cato 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 8,298 | 1 in 40K | 8.3K | Cato | 350 |
| BR Brazil | — | 6,914as Gato | 1 in 31K | 6.9K | — | 2 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,609as Gato | 1 in 31K | 1.6K | — | 12 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 45K | 14 | Cato | 148 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈1,000 est. | ≈1 in 105K | — | Cato | 25 |
| SE Sweden | — | 558 | 1 in 18K | 558 | Cato | 23 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | — | 301 | 1 in 337 | 301 | — | 7 |
| IE Ireland | — | ≈230 est. | ≈1 in 23K | — | Cato | 6 |
| GY Guyana | #462 | 208 | 1 in 3.6K | 208 | Cato | 4 |
| GD Grenada | — | 174 | 1 in 650 | 174 | — | 6 |
8,298 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Surnames of England and Wales (taliesin-arlein.net, Sept 2002 electoral register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025. 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)
Cato is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, from the Roman name Cato; used for a stern moralist
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, Acronym of Cadet Administrative and Training Order.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, M. Porcius. Roman statesman
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, weibl. Vom., ursprünglich französische, dann niederländische Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Latin, dative/ablative masculine/neuter singular of catus
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)
- Jack Catob. 1889AUAustralian photographer and photo historian (1889–1971)
- Nancy Catob. 1917AUAustralian author
- Bob Catob. 1923USAmerican graphic designer (1923-1999)
- Keefe Catob. 1958USformer baseball player from the United States
- Molly Scott Catob. 1963GBBritish economist and Member of the European Parliament (born 1963)
- Magnus Catob. 1967SESwedish handball player
- Suzy Catob. 1968NZNew Zealand children's entertainer
- Kelvin Catob. 1974USAmerican basketball player (born 1974)
- Lurine Catob. 1974GBBritish Gospel singer, songwriter and session vocalist
- Cordell Catob. 1992TTTrinidadian footballer
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 47 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.3K | #4,285 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 7.9K | #4,125 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.9K | #4,365 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 711 | #12,440 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 558 | #1,721 |
| VC St. Vincent & Grenadines | Electoral Office of St Vincent & the Grenadines — Final Voters List (Nov 2025) | 2025 | 301 | #64 |
| GY Guyana | Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025 | 2025 | 208 | #418 |
| GD Grenada | Grenada — Consolidated List of Electors December 2025 | 2025 | 174 | #84 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 21 | #82,856 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 21 | #80,648 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- 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 Cato mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) A different form of Catto; (ii) anglicization of Spanish Cato, from a personal name perhaps inspired by the Roman statesman Cato. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Cato?
- A machine transcription gives /keɪtoʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- What are other forms of the name Cato?
- In the etymology graph, Cate, Caja and Kaarina are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Cato?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,298 people named Cato in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Cato compared with other names?
- In Guyana, Cato is the 462nd most common surname of 15,834 surnames recorded there.
- In which country does Cato have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.3 thousand people named Cato, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cato.
- Where is Cato most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cato is densest in St. Vincent & Grenadines — about 1 in 337 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
What do you want to know about Cato?
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/catoThe 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, “Cato” — the 462nd most common surname in Guyana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.