Marco: Meaning of Baby Name Marco

About the Name Marco

Marco is the Italian form of Mark (see separate entry on Mark for the Latin Marcus etymology, possibly connected to the Roman god Mars or to the Latin mas meaning "male, manly"). The Italian Marco has been used continuously across Italian-Catholic naming traditions for over a millennium.

Notable bearers include the iconic Venetian explorer Marco Polo (1254–1324, the Venetian merchant traveler whose late-13th-century journey through Mongol-ruled Asia and his subsequent book The Travels of Marco Polo introduced Europe to medieval China); American politician Marco Rubio (born 1971, US Senator from Florida and 2016 Republican presidential candidate); and Spanish soccer player Marco Asensio.

Marco has been continuously used in Italian-American and Spanish-American communities for over a century. The name climbed into the US top 300 boys' rank by 1990 and held a top-300 range since. The name's appeal is its layered Roman-Italian-Catholic-historical pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built explorer-historical anchor (Marco Polo), the strong contemporary cultural recognition, and tonal warmth distinctive to Italian-language naming. The name reads as both classical-Italian and contemporary American. Common nicknames Mark (the related English form), Marky, and the rare Marc each carry distinct registers; international forms include Marco (essentially identical across Italian/Spanish/Portuguese), Marcos (Spanish/Portuguese), Marc (French/Catalan), Marek (Polish/Czech), and the original Latin Marcus.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Marco

957

Spanish baby names in our dictionary

398

Spanish male names

266

5-letter M-names in our dictionary

767

M-male names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

35,233

total US births named Marco (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

📈 Rising: Marco climbed 23 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#393 in 2020 → #370 in 2025).

Annual US births named Marco by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2005 with 2,117 boys named Marco (boy rank #187 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #370 for boys (862 US births). That's 183 places below its 2005 peak.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Marco Most Popular?

Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Marco the strongest states are Connecticut, Texas, California.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Connecticut	#247	124
2	Texas	#250	1,457
3	California	#251	1,571
4	New Jersey	#262	319
5	Arizona	#284	277
6	Illinois	#299	369
7	New York	#304	563
8	New Mexico	#314	44
9	Florida	#324	537
10	Massachusetts	#339	153

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Louisiana	#732	40
2	Alabama	#667	26
3	Ohio	#626	123
4	Missouri	#614	37
5	Tennessee	#609	101
6	Oklahoma	#607	42
7	South Carolina	#602	27
8	Indiana	#591	91
9	Iowa	#588	16
10	Minnesota	#584	82

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Marco in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Marcos	Of Mars. The Roman Fertility God Mars For Whom March Was Named.	Male	Spanish
Markos	Of Mars. The Roman Fertility God Mars For Whom March Was Named.	Male	German

Famous People Named Marco

1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Marco.

Marco Polo — Explorer (1254)

Browse more famous Marcos and similar first names →

Looking for names like Marco?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

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Compare Marco to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Marco against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Marco vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Marco vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Marco vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Marco vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Marco vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Marco vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Marco vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Marco vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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