Leo

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Leo boys named Leo

By the numbers

Total US births

262,124

Estimated living today

147,000

Median age today

10

Peak year

2022

Best rank

22nd

Rank in 2025

19th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

2,136 / 259,988

How old the living Leos are

born that year still alive today

Of the 262,124 babies given the name since 1880, about 147,000 are alive — 56 in every hundred. Roughly 95,000 of them are children and 22,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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

Origin Latin

From Latin leō (“lion”), /, from sux 𒌨𒄞𒆷 (“lion; name of constellation”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Leos

• Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)Russian author
• Leo XIV (born 1955)267th Pope of the Catholic Church
• Leo XIII (1810–1903)Pope of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903
• Leo I (390–461)Pope from 440 to 461
• Leo X (1475–1521)pope from 1513 to 1521
• Leo XII (1760–1829)Pope of the Catholic Church from 1823 to 1829
• Leo III (750–816)Pope of the Catholic Church from 795 to 816
• Leo XI (1535–1605)pope of the Catholic Church in April 1605

People named Leo with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Leo is most common

• CA22,997
• NY21,097
• PA14,609
• TX13,874
• IL13,398
• MA13,012
• MI10,580
• OH9,289
• MN7,084
• FL6,790

Relative to how many babies each state records, Leo is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.6×), North Dakota (2.5×), New Hampshire (2.4×), Vermont (2.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2022

The most popular boys’ names the year Leo peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• Oliver
• James
• Elijah
• William

All the names of 2022

Leo elsewhere

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.

Leo: births by region

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.

By canton, Leo is most concentrated in Jura, where 0.99% of children were given it – 144 of them.

Leo: rank by region

In 2025, Leo was given 5 times or more in 6 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Leo was among the 10 most common names in 15 regions of Spain.

In 2024, Leo was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Leo was given 2 times or more in 17 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Leo appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (Léo, 5th), Province of Liège (Léo, 8th), Province of Luxembourg (Léo, 8th), Province of Walloon Brabant (Léo, 9th), Province of Namur (Léo, 18th), Province of East Flanders (Leo, 24th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Leo, 24th), Province of Limburg (Leo, 38th), Province of West Flanders (Leo, 42nd), Province of Walloon Brabant (Leo, 48th), Province of Antwerp (Leo, 54th), Brussels-Capital Region (Léo, 56th), Brussels-Capital Region (Leo, 56th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Léo, 77th), Province of Liège (Leo, 86th), Province of East Flanders (Léo, 106th), Province of Hainaut (Leo, 110th) and Province of Antwerp (Léo, 226th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.

Leo by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Leo 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.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – 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 Leo lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 36,280 men called Leo 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

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Leonard
• Leon
• Leona
• Leonardo
• Leola
• Leonel
• Leora
• Leota
• Leonidas
• Leonora
• Leone
• Leonor

Leo against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Leo vs Leonard
• Leo vs Leon
• Leo vs Leona
• Leo vs Leonardo
• Leo vs Leola
• Leo vs Leonel

Compare Leo with a name of your own