Arlo
- Pronunciation
- [Ar-lo]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- The Barberry
- Origin
- Spanish
About the Name Arlo
Arlo has multiple proposed origins, none entirely dominant. The most credible direct etymology connects Arlo to the Anglo-Saxon Aerlow meaning "hill-fort" or the Old English here-low meaning "army hill." An alternative reading derives Arlo from the Spanish arlo meaning "barberry," or from the medieval Italian Arlo. A third reading connects Arlo to the Old English aere (eagle) plus a place-name element.
The name's most influential modern bearer is American folk singer Arlo Guthrie (born 1947, son of Woody Guthrie), whose 1967 protest-folk song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" became one of the iconic anti-Vietnam-War folk songs and is annually played on American radio on Thanksgiving Day. The 1969 film adaptation made Arlo Guthrie a major American folk-music figure.
The contemporary American Arlo surge is part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Theodore and Henry, accelerating dramatically through the 2010s and 2020s. The name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2005 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 75 by 2022. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built folk-music-cool register, the compact two-syllable rhythm with soft consonants, and the slight retro-Americana feel. The name reads as both vintage and distinctly contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Arlie and the rare R each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms include the rare Arlow and Arlowyn. International variants are minimal since the name's first-name use is essentially English-American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Arlo
US Popularity History (2011–2025)
Annual US births named Arlo by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2024 with 2,481 boys named Arlo (boy rank #146 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #148 for boys (2,443 US births). That's 2 places below its 2024 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.
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Where in the US Is Arlo 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 Arlo the strongest states are Vermont, Wyoming, Minnesota.
Strongest boys-name states
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Georgia | #434 | 277 |
| 2 | Louisiana | #412 | 108 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #394 | 206 |
| 4 | South Carolina | #392 | 126 |
| 5 | Alabama | #388 | 148 |
| 6 | Texas | #369 | 994 |
| 7 | Florida | #342 | 587 |
| 8 | Arkansas | #324 | 100 |
| 9 | Maryland | #319 | 190 |
| 10 | Virginia | #318 | 285 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Arlo in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Arlo?
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 Arlo to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Arlo 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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