Otto
Otto reached its high-water mark in 2024 at number 274, and has been recorded 40,015 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 277th. About 17,000 Ottos are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Otto boys named Otto
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 40,015
- Estimated living today
- 17,000
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 274th
- Rank in 2025
- 277th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 100 / 39,915
How old the living Ottos are
born that year still alive today
Of the 40,015 babies given the name since 1880, about 17,000 are alive — 43 in every hundred. Roughly 11,000 of them are children and 2,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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 Germanic languages
from Old High German, short form of compound names (such as Otachar, Ottokar) beginning with Proto-West Germanic *aud, from Proto-Germanic *audaz (“wealth, riches”) (cognate of English in Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edith, etc.).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ottos
- Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898)German statesman and Chancellor
- Otto Hahn (1879–1968)German chemist and physicist
- Otto I the Great (912–973)Holy Roman Emperor from 962 to 973
- Otto Stern (1888–1969)German-American physicist
- Otto Wallach (1847–1931)German chemist
- Otto Diels (1876–1954)German chemist
- Otto von Habsburg (1912–2011)Head of the House of Habsburg and German politician
- Otto Dix (1891–1969)German painter and printmaker
People named Otto with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Otto is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Otto is most concentrated in North Dakota (5.1×), South Dakota (3.2×), Minnesota (2.6×), Wisconsin (2.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular boys’ names the year Otto peaked:
Otto elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Otto | 4,283 | 113th |
| Sweden boys | Otto | 4,195 | 21st |
| Denmark boys | Otto | 2,862 | 10th |
| Norway boys | Otto | 1,686 | 90th |
| France boys | Otto | 1,020 | 212th |
| Belgium boys | Otto | 787 | 143rd |
| Switzerland boys | Otto | 131 | 514th |
| Scotland boys | Otto | 110 | 208th |
| Ireland boys | Otto | 50 | 390th |
| Poland boys | Otto | 48 birth registrations | 415th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Otto | 11 | 334th |
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.
Otto: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Otto | 103 | 0.008% | 456th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Otto | 20 | 0.005% | 527th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Otto | 8 | 0.012% | 184th |
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, Otto is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 54 of them.
Otto: rank by region
In 2025, Otto was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Otto | 83 | 66 |
In 2025, Otto was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lubelskie | Otto | 140 | 2 |
| Śląskie | Otto | 212 | 3 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Otto appears in the lists for Province of East Flanders (31st), Province of Antwerp (86th), Province of Flemish Brabant (112th) and Province of West Flanders (138th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Otto by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 159 | 139th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Otto 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Otto | 8,062 | 14,727 |
| the Netherlands boys | Otto | 3,886 | 8,329 |
| the Netherlands girls | Otto | — | 38 |
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 Otto lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 621 men called Otto 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 | Otto | 210 | 0.072 | 869 |
| Ourense | Otto | 7 | 0.048 | 967 |
| Balears, Illes | Otto | 29 | 0.047 | 1,259 |
| Lleida | Otto | 11 | 0.047 | 1,332 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Otto | 40 | 0.040 | 1,592 |
| Tarragona | Otto | 16 | 0.037 | 1,528 |
Listed in 23 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 29 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
Otto 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.