Beau is a French word, which means ‘handsome’ or ‘beautiful’. It can also be used as a nickname or as a shortened form of the name Beaufort. Beau is associated with the idea of physical beauty, charm or elegance.
Beau is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Beau isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Beau ranks 154. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 14 were named Beau. In the entire USA, approximately 49,631 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Beau. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Beau is a French word, which means ‘handsome’ or ‘beautiful’. It can also be used as a nickname or as a shortened form of the name Beaufort. Beau is associated with the idea of physical beauty, charm or elegance.
Did you know... Beau also serves as a synonym for boyfriend?
This is a real surprise! Beau is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off in the 21st century. In the year 2022, it reached its best rank at #91 according to our SmartGenius statistics. This makes Beau much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. While the name Beau was observed for the first time ever in 1932, it now seems to have found its place in the zeitgeist of the 21st century. In 2022, the year of its highest popularity, the name was given a total of 3,997 times. Whether this beautiful boys' name can repeat or even exceed its previous best ranking in the coming years remains to be seen, but the prospects are promising given the positive trend.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Beau was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The name Beau may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Beau is apparently especially popular in Montana. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 1,060 men in Montana is called Beau. In total, that’s 496 people who feel addressed when the name Beau is shouted loudly across Montana and who ensure that their name makes it to #231 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Beau as the answer a total of 49,631 times. This places Beau at #438 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Beau as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter B is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.2% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Beau is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Thus, it follows that if 4.2% of all boys' names start with a B, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: Brian is the boys’ name starting with B, which is the most common of all.
If your name is Beau and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Beau, you can simply say:
Butterfly
Elephant
Apple
Unicorn
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Beau
Beau
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
B
E
A
U
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
B
E
A
U
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Beau sounds like this:
