Otto is a Germanic given name and surname, which developed from Audo meaning ‘wealth’ or ‘fortune’. The name is known mainly in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Otto is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Otto 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, Otto ranks 438. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Otto. In the entire USA, approximately 24,522 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Otto. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
Otto is a Germanic given name and surname, which developed from Audo meaning ‘wealth’ or ‘fortune’. The name is known mainly in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
In the U.S.,... Otto was quite popular in the 19th century. Since 2010, it is on the rise again.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Otto is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Otto for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Otto is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Otto is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #60 Otto has never been more popular than back in 1880.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Otto was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 1,080 babies were named Otto in the USA in 2022, ranking it #301 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1997, when it was only ranked at #1,689 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 51 boys were named Otto.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter O is pretty rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an O. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With four letters, the name Otto 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.
That means that since 1.8% of all boys’ names begin with an O, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names beginning with an O, which are quite popular
If your name is Otto 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 Otto, you can simply say:
Orange
Tiger
Tiger
Orange
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Otto
Otto
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
O
T
T
O
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.
O
T
T
O
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. Otto sounds like this:
