Bodo

given name · Latin script

Meaning: from the Germanic name stem bod-/bodo-, related to 'messenger'

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/bɔdɔ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Bodo is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Germany than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • DEGermany≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
  • USUnited States1 in 2.2M
  • CHSwitzerland≈1 in 32K

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.

Germany (inferred from the name graph)

≈32,000 people, est.

Sources
187 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)

Germany, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from the Germanic name stem bod-/bodo-, related to 'messenger'

Sources 1

  • Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bodo 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.

Where Bodo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
DE Germany#426≈32,000 est.≈1 in 2.5K—Bodo182
ID Indonesia—≈410 est.≈1 in 659K—Bodo36
CI Côte d’Ivoire—≈400 est.≈1 in 68K687——
EG Egypt—≈300 est.≈1 in 345K—Bodo18
CH Switzerland—≈260 est.≈1 in 32K33Bodo27
US United States—1541 in 2.2M671Bodo187
AT Austria—≈83 est.≈1 in 106K16Bodo34
SE Sweden—721 in 142K72—11

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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; nomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Bodo is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Polish given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland

    Also written Bodó

  • Hungarian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, Romania, Spain, United States

    Also written Bodó, Bödő, Bodò, Bödo, Bödö

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Bodó, Bodö, Bodò, Bodō

  • Croatian given name14 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Croatia, United States, India, Switzerland

    Languages: Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian

    Also written Bodó, Bödö, Бодо, Bõdõ, Boďo

  • Hindi surname32 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, Indonesia, United States, Malaysia

    Languages: Hindi, Bangla, Indonesian

    Also written Boro, 바오로, Boroo, Borrow, 보로

  • Hindi given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Bodó, Boďo

54 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Bodo 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, ) Boto; Botho: alter deutscher männl. Vom., der auf altsächs. bodo »Gebie­ ter«, später umgedeutet zu ahd. boto »Bote«, zurückgeht. Zu Beginn des 19. Jh.s wurde der

    as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen

  • In English, lang., people, India

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In German, Aus dem Rufnamen Bodo/Bode < ahd. boto, as. bodo ‚Gebieter‘; patronymischer Familienname.

    as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen

  • Germanic: ‘messenger’.

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • German: from an old Germanic personal name, originally a short form of various compound names containing the first element bod tidings, messenger.

    as a word

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)

1850190019502000Bodo Ebhardt, b. 1865Bodo Uhse, b. 1904Mahmoud Bodo Rasch, b. 1943Bodo Tümmler, b. 1943Bodo Wolf, b. 1944Bodo Kirchhoff, b. 1948Bodo Hombach, b. 1952Bodo Ramelow, b. 1956Bodo Schäfer, b. 1960Bodo Illgner, b. 1967

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)

InformalHallo Bodo,Hi Bodo, (English)

A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 61 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Bodo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
CI Côte d’Ivoirenomprenoms.ci — ranked Ivorian surname frequencies—687#746
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020671#35,964
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010636#35,395
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000614#34,799
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)202420#36,564
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 8

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 Bodo mean, and where does it come from?
from the Germanic name stem bod-/bodo-, related to 'messenger' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
How do you pronounce Bodo?
A machine transcription gives /bɔdɔ/ (IPA) for German.
Is Bodo a male or female name?
Bodo is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Bodo have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 32 thousand people named Bodo in Germany, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bodo.
How common is the name Bodo?
In the United States, the national register counted 154 people named Bodo in 2020, about 1 in 2.2 million residents.
How common is Bodo compared with other names?
In Germany, Bodo is the 426th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bodo?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bodo

The 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, “Bodo” — the 426th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bodo parses inside a full name →