Cato

7,852 people in the United States were counted with the surname Cato in the 2020 census, making it the 4,365th most common in the country. That is about one person in 38,100.

By the numbers

People: 7,852
Rank: 4,365th
How common: 1 in 38,100
Per 100,000: 2.6

Where the name comes from

Origin French

From French Catherine. Used as a matronymic.

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

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Cato described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 52.3%
Black, not Hispanic 36.5%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.9%
Hispanic or Latino 4.2%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 1.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.7%

Notable people called Cato

Molly Scott Cato (born 1963)British economist and Member of the European Parliament
Magnus Cato (born 1967)Swedish handball player

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

Surnames like Cato

Also a first name

Cato has been given to 675 American babies as a first name since 1880, peaking in 2025. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.