Bo
Bo reached its high-water mark in 2025 at number 449, and has been recorded 15,849 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 449th. About 15,000 Bos are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bo boys named Bo
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 15,849
- Estimated living today
- 15,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 449th
- Rank in 2025
- 449th
- First recorded
- 1907
- Girls / boys
- 865 / 14,984
How old the living Bos are
born that year still alive today
Of the 15,849 babies given the name since 1907, about 15,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 8,600 of them are children and 150 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Either borrowed from modern Danish Bo or Swedish Bo, or a spelling variant of the male given name Beau.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Bos
- Bo Derek (born 1956)American actress
- Bo Diddley (1928–2008)American guitarist
- Bo Xilai (born 1949)former Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party
- Bo Burnham (born 1990)American comedian
- Bo Carpelan (1926–2011)Finnish writer
- Bo Widerberg (1930–1997)Swedish film director, screenwriter and film editor
- Bo Larsson (1944–2023)Swedish footballer
- Bo Dallas (born 1990)American professional wrestler
People named Bo with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bo is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bo is most concentrated in Utah (3.3×), Idaho (2.3×), Oregon (2.3×), Montana (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Bo peaked:
Bo elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium girls | Bo | 2,458 | 62nd |
| Norway boys | Bo | 1,151 | 129th |
| England and Wales girls | Bo | 687 | 654th |
| Belgium boys | Bo | 421 | 319th |
| England and Wales boys | Bo | 275 | 1,117th |
| Switzerland boys | Bo | 56 | 862nd |
| Ireland boys | Bo | 22 | 548th |
| France girls | Bo | 15 | 7,230th |
| Ireland girls | Bo | 14 | 661st |
| Scotland boys | Bo | 14 | 482nd |
| France boys | Bo | 10 | 6,709th |
| Scotland girls | Bo | 6 | 687th |
| Poland girls | Bảo | 2 birth registrations | 574th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Bo: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Bo | 52 | 0.004% | 713th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Bo | 4 | 0.001% | 645th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Bo: rank by region
In 2025, Bo was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Bo | 303 | 18 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Bo appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (243rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Bo by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 68 | 198th |
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 21 | 244th |
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 12 | 321st |
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 552nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Bo among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Bo | 5,809 | 6,726 |
| the Netherlands boys | Bo | 1,486 | 1,829 |
| Finland boys | Bo | 1,041 | 1,573 |
| Finland girls | Bo | 10 | 15 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Bo lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 283 men called Bo were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barcelona | Bo | 81 | 0.028 | 1,797 |
| Girona | Bo | 10 | 0.024 | 2,144 |
| Madrid | Bo | 77 | 0.023 | 2,064 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Bo | 20 | 0.020 | 2,702 |
| Málaga | Bo | 17 | 0.019 | 2,284 |
| Tarragona | Bo | 6 | 0.014 | 3,191 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Bo against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.