Margo
Meaning
variant of Margot, the French short form of Marguerite (Margaret: Greek margarites, "pearl")
Famously borne by Margo Hayes, the first woman to climb the 5.15a grade.
The story
Margo is the pearl, four steps removed: Behind the Name chains it as a variant of Margot, the French short form of Marguerite, the French form of Margaret, from Greek margarites, pearl, a word probably borrowed from an Indo-Iranian language before Greek ever had it. Midcentury America loved it: about 4,800 girls in the 1940s and about 5,900 in the 1950s. Then the long ebb, down to about 890 in the 2000s, and the vintage turn: about 1,800 in the 2010s and about 2,950 so far this decade. The o-ending does modern work on an old jewel of a name, and the French sister spelling Margot climbs beside it. Short, chic, and carrying a pearl at the bottom of it.
Margo around the world
One shared root links 17 names across 7 languages.
Shared root: from Greek margarites "pearl", by way of Latin Margarita
The constellation
13 more branches of this family
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Margo peaked in the 2020s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
548 people · the #12,547 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 333,333 · median age 52
Among people named Margo living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1960s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 71 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Margo deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Margo 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 Margo fits with your family’s names and surname.
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