Otto
Meaning
wealth, fortune
The story
Otto is old Germanic for wealth and fortune, an emperor's name four times over, and a palindrome, like Ada: it reads the same in the mirror, which children discover with delight about a week after learning to spell it. The record is a clean vintage arc: about 5,600 a decade in the 1910s and 1920s, the German-classic wing that Walter and Warren also occupy, then the long fade to a floor of 570 in the 1980s, and the return: 1,200, then 4,600 in the 2010s, and already 6,500 so far this decade, past the full 2010s with years to run. In our records it goes to boys about 37,200 to 100, every one this decade. Two crisp syllables, four letters, four emperors, one mirror trick: Otto packs more into less than nearly anything in the ledger.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Otto peaked in the 2020s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
8,344 people · the #1,931 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 24,390 · median age 5
Among people named Otto living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2010s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 3,377 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Otto deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Otto 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 Otto fits with your family’s names and surname.
Where Otto travels
German Brazilian · wealth, prosperity; kept as a heritage spelling in Blumenau's German-Brazilian families
German · wealth, prosperity
Keep exploring
German Brazilian baby names · German baby names · Short names
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