Mayo
Masculine · “Plain of the yews”
Mayo is given to both — 1,236 boys and 256 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Mayo is an Irish county whose name is a description of what grew there: a plain of yew trees. The yews are gone, the plain is farmland, and the name has traveled further than almost any other Irish county name, mostly because of the families who left it.
How old is the name Mayo?
Mayo first appears in US birth records in 1893 — 132 years ago. The typical Mayo alive today was born around 1933, making them about 92 years old. About 400 people named Mayo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mayo most popular?
Mayo peaked in 1893, reaching #768 nationally. See the whole 1893 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Maigh Eo to Mayo
The story of Mayo
The surname carried the name into American medicine. A doctor called Mayo was practicing in a small Minnesota town when a tornado went through it, killing dozens and leaving the place with no hospital and nowhere to put the injured; the Sisters of Saint Francis, who ran the local school, proposed building one and asked him to take charge of it if they did. He agreed, they raised the money, and the hospital opened a few years later with his two sons working alongside him. That arrangement, a Catholic nursing order and a Protestant family of surgeons, grew into one of the best-known medical institutions in the world, and it is named after them.
Meaning
Plain of the yews
Irish Maigh Eo, from magh, a plain, and eo, a yew tree. It named a monastery first and then the county around it. The yew was significant enough in early Ireland to appear in a good many place names and in the alphabet of tree names, and it lived long enough that a stand of them was a landmark worth naming a district after.
How the name formed
- Maigh Eo
- Mayo
Related forms: Maigh Eo
Pronouncing Mayo
MAY-oh
Two syllables with the stress at the front. The Irish is closer to my-OH, with the weight at the back and a different first vowel, so the English pronunciation is a naturalization rather than a reproduction.
Nicknames for Mayo
Moderate
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
- 1893
- Most boys named
- 192138 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #768reached in 1893
- Change vs 1992
- −16.7%5 in 2005, from 6
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.
Mayo in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Maigh Eo in Irish — related form
Mayos among us
people named Mayo are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Mayo 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
- Four letters, no silent ones, and no possible confusion about how to say it in English.
- It works for a child of either sex, which the record confirms.
- It has a real and locatable history in two countries.
- It is also the name of a condiment, and children will get there before anybody mentions the county.
- The record carries it for girls as well as boys, so it signals nothing on a form.
- It reads as a surname or a place before it reads as a first name.
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What they receive
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Mayo
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Mayos are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Mayo are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mayo in 2025?
- Mayo is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Mayo with classmates?
- Mayo will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Michael#21 · Matthew#32 · Mark#244 · Mason#39 · Martin#335 · Marvin#699 · Melvin#958 · Marcus#258
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mayo? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mayo and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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