Otto
- Pronunciation
- [O-tto]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Born Eighth
- Origin
- German
About the Name Otto
Otto descends from the Old Germanic Otto, a short form of various longer Germanic names containing the element od (wealth, prosperity) — including Otmar, Othmar, and Ottokar. The name has been used continuously across Germanic naming traditions for over a millennium.
Notable historical bearers include the iconic Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (912–973 CE, the founder of the medieval Holy Roman Empire); the iconic Confederate Civil War general Otto von Bismarck (using Bismarck as a surname, 1815–1898, the iconic Prussian-German statesman who unified Germany in 1871 and served as the first Chancellor of the German Empire); American novelist Otto Frank (the father of Anne Frank); and the iconic American children's-book character Otto Octavius (Doctor Octopus of Marvel Comics, 1963–present).
Otto held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1880 through 1955 — over seven decades of consistent American popularity. After a long mid-late 20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing again through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Atlas, Cassius, and Theodore. Otto climbed back into the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Germanic-imperial-medieval pedigree, the in-built distinctive emperor-historical sophistication, and the compact two-syllable structure with the distinctive O-T-O palindromic rhythm. Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Germanic and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Otts and Toto each occasionally appear; the longer formal Otmar, Othmar, or Ottokar are sometimes used as Otto's official-document version. International forms include Otto (essentially identical across German/Italian/Spanish/Polish/Hungarian), Otho (Latin), and the original Old Germanic Otto.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Otto
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Otto by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 1,241 boys named Otto (boy rank #277 that year).
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.
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Where in the US Is Otto 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 Otto the strongest states are Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Minnesota | #118 | 544 |
| 2 | North Dakota | #143 | 93 |
| 3 | Wisconsin | #159 | 389 |
| 4 | South Dakota | #161 | 85 |
| 5 | Montana | #163 | 70 |
| 6 | New Hampshire | #190 | 44 |
| 7 | Maine | #196 | 53 |
| 8 | Rhode Island | #218 | 22 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #231 | 26 |
| 10 | Iowa | #232 | 167 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | #786 | 24 |
| 2 | Georgia | #729 | 79 |
| 3 | Texas | #684 | 376 |
| 4 | North Carolina | #674 | 132 |
| 5 | Florida | #666 | 231 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #607 | 97 |
| 7 | New Jersey | #594 | 116 |
| 8 | South Carolina | #579 | 44 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | #531 | 82 |
| 10 | Arizona | #516 | 130 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Otto in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odo | Name Of A Bishop | Male | French |
Famous People Named Otto
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Otto.
- Otto Frank — Entrepreneur (1889)
- Otto Pérez Molina is currently the President of Guatemala.
- Otto von Bismarck — Politician (1815)
Looking for names like Otto?
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.
Compare Otto to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Otto against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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