Placido
Meaning
calm, serene (Latin placidus)
The story
Placido is the Latin placidus, calm and serene, worn first by a sixth-century saint: Placidus, the boy sent to study under Benedict of Nursia, remembered in the old stories for being rescued from a lake by a fellow monk who walked out onto the water to reach him. The name settled into Italian and Spanish as Placido and stayed mostly quiet for centuries, a name for monks and the occasional poet. Then came the tenor. Placido Domingo carried it onto every opera stage on earth, and when the Three Tenors sang to packed stadiums through the 1990s, the name's small rise in US records happened right on cue. We cannot prove the connection, but the timing is hard to ignore. Underneath, it remains what it has always been: a promise of calm, made in three soft syllables.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Placido has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
2,321 people · the #4,622 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 90,909 · median age 58
Among people named Placido living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1960s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Placido
People given the name Placido in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1950 to 1999. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Placido deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Placido 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 Placido fits with your family’s names and surname.
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