Hideo
Masculine · “excellent man”
Hideo is a Japanese man's name, and both of its halves are doing plain work: the first means excellent or fine, and the second is the old word for a man. It shares that first element with one of the most remarkable careers in Japanese history.
How old is the name Hideo?
Hideo first appears in US birth records in 1910 — 115 years ago. The typical Hideo alive today was born around 1923, making them about 102 years old. Fewer than a hundred people named Hideo are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
When was the name Hideo most popular?
Hideo peaked in 1925, reaching #843 nationally. See the whole 1925 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Hideo
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was born a peasant's son with no family name, joined a warlord's service as a sandal-bearer, and ended as the effective ruler of Japan. Having climbed that ladder, he took it away. His government carried out a nationwide sword hunt, confiscating weapons from farmers and villagers, and then issued edicts fixing people in their occupations: a farmer could not become a soldier, a soldier could not become a townsman. The social mobility that had made him possible was closed behind him, deliberately, and the arrangement held for two and a half centuries. He is remembered in Japan as a genius and as a cautionary tale in roughly equal measure, and the hide in his name is the hide in this one.
Meaningscholars disagree
excellent man
The o at the end is the word for man in every version. The hide in front is usually the character for excellent or surpassing, though other characters can be written for the same sound, so a particular family's spelling settles the sense in a way an American record cannot.
Pronouncing Hideo
HEE-deh-oh
Three syllables, all light, with very little stress on any of them. The first is not the English word hide, and that is the one correction worth making early.
Nicknames for Hideo
Limited
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1910
- Most boys named
- 192562 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #843reached in 1925
- Change vs 1940
- +20.0%6 in 1944, from 5
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Hideo in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Hideo in Japanese — same name
Hideos among us
Fewer than a hundred people named Hideo are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Hideo sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The meaning is documented and plain, and a child can be told it in four words.
- Three open syllables with no difficult sounds survive the crossing between languages intact.
- It is genuinely rare in the United States while being entirely ordinary in Japan.
- American readers will see the English word hide at the front, and children are quick to notice that sort of thing.
- Outside Japanese-speaking households the characters that fix the meaning are not recorded, so part of the name stays behind.
- The -o ending now reads in Japan as belonging to an older generation, much as the -ko ending does for women.
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Hideo
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Hideos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. Fewer than a hundred people named Hideo are estimated to be alive in the US today — a true one-of-a-kind name.
- How popular is the name Hideo in 2025?
- Hideo is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Hideo with classmates?
- Hideo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More H names
The most-given names starting with H, all years combined.
Henry#5 · Harold#991 · Harry#775 · Howard#1002 · Hunter#130 · Herbert#2641 · Herman#2363 · Harvey#251
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Hideo? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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