Augusto
Meaning
“Spanish, Italian and Portuguese form of Augustus, 'exalted, venerable', from Latin augeo, 'to increase'”
The story
Augusto is the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese form of Augustus, the title the Roman Senate granted Octavian in 27 BC, from the Latin augeo, to increase: exalted, venerable, a name that is literally a promotion. Brazil treats it as a working classic rather than a museum piece: 112,121 Augustos in the 2022 census, rank 289, present in strength in every decade on record, from 2,466 born in the 1930s to 18,377 in the 1990s, with a median age of 29. Its Brazilian bearers wrote in two registers: Augusto dos Anjos, the poet from Paraíba who died at thirty in 1914 and became a classic afterward, and Augusto Boal, the Rio-born theatre practitioner and theorist whose ideas about participatory drama traveled the world. An emperor's title that settled in as an ordinary first name and never lost the posture.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Augusto does not appear in US Social Security baby-name records, which list only names given to at least five babies in a year. There is no popularity curve to chart: a genuinely rare pick.
Popularity in Brazil
112,121 people · the #289 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,812 · median age 29
Among people named Augusto living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 11,338 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Augusto deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Augusto truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Augusto fits with your family’s names and surname.
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