Katō
surname · Latin script
Katō is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Japan than in any other country, where it is the 50th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Japanese 加藤 (Katō).
- JPJapan≈1 in 400(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 63K
- UGUganda≈1 in 1.6K
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.
- Japan (inferred from the name graph)
- Record sources
- 222 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 400 (inferred from the name graph)
≈310,000 people, est.
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Japan, 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 Kato in JP Japan, US United States, PH Philippines.
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)Borrowed from Japanese 加藤 (Katō).
Cited for this meaning 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Wiktionary
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Katō 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP Japan | #50 | ≈310,000 est. | ≈1 in 400 | — | Kato | 174 |
| UG Uganda | — | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | 2 | — | 12 |
| US United States | — | 5,257 | 1 in 63K | 5.3K | Kato | 222 |
| BR Brazil | — | 3,848 | 1 in 55K | 3.8K | — | — |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 165K | — | Kato | 23 |
| FI Finland | — | 114 | 1 in 49K | 114 | — | 5 |
| EE Estonia | — | ≈63 est. | ≈1 in 19K | 9 | — | 6 |
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); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)- Katō Kiyomasab. 1562JP16th-century Japanese daimyo (1562-1611)
- Daisuke Katōb. 1911JPJapanese actor (1911–1975)
- Hibari Misorab. 1937JPnot in their usual nameJapanese singer and actress (1937-1989)
- Monkey Punchb. 1937JPnot in their usual nameJapanese manga artist (1937–2019)
- Masahiko Tsugawab. 1940JPnot in their usual nameJapanese actor and film director
- Toru Emorib. 1944JPnot in their usual nameJapanese actor and playwright
- Masaya Katōb. 1963JPJapanese model, actor and voice actor
- Koyukib. 1976JPnot in their usual nameJapanese actor and model
- Ayuko Katob. 1979JPJapanese politician
- Yuria Katob. 1981JPJapanese pornographic actress
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)1 register or reference work attests this spelling, across 0 countries.
Reference works 1
- Wikipedia surname tokens
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 Katō mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Japanese 加藤 (Katō). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Wiktionary.
- In which country does Katō have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 314 thousand people named Katō in Japan, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled kato.
- How common is the name Katō?
- In the United States, the national register counted 5,257 people named Katō in 2010, about 1 in 63 thousand residents.
- How common is Katō compared with other names?
- In Japan, Katō is the 50th most common surname of 142,159 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Katō?
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/kat%C5%8DThe 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, “Katō” — the 50th most common surname in Japan. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.