Benicio
- Pronunciation
- [Be-ni-cio]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Benevolent One.
- Origin
- Latin
About the Name Benicio
Benicio is a warm, Latin-rooted name carrying the sense of "benevolent one," linked to benedictus and the wider family of blessing-names that includes Benedict and Benito. With its rolling four syllables and bright Spanish-Italian flavor, it manages to feel both classic and refreshingly distinctive in the English-speaking world, offering parents a melodic, internationally minded alternative to the familiar Benjamin and Benedict while keeping the same friendly Ben at its heart.
A major reason for the name's modern profile is the actor Benicio Del Toro (born 1967), the Puerto Rican-American performer whose three-decade career has produced multiple acclaimed American dramatic film roles, including his 2001 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. His prominence helped introduce the name to a wide American audience and gave it a cool, charismatic association.
Benicio is a name clearly on the way up. It first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2016 and reached its best rank ever in 2024 at #751, with 339 boys given the name that year, its single most popular moment at the most recent count. Across its run it has been given to roughly 2,309 boys who reached the top-1000. Friendly short forms like Ben and Benny make it easy and approachable to wear in everyday life.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Benicio
US Popularity History (2016–2025)
Annual US births named Benicio by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 405 boys named Benicio (boy rank #672 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.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Benicio 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 Benicio the strongest states are Massachusetts, Nevada, California.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Massachusetts | #367 | 130 |
| 2 | Nevada | #403 | 21 |
| 3 | California | #462 | 674 |
| 4 | Connecticut | #504 | 15 |
| 5 | New Jersey | #565 | 74 |
| 6 | Illinois | #568 | 166 |
| 7 | Oregon | #572 | 17 |
| 8 | Arizona | #581 | 103 |
| 9 | Colorado | #626 | 57 |
| 10 | Washington | #695 | 46 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Benicio in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Famous People Named Benicio
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Benicio.
- Benicio Del Toro — Movie Actor (1967)
Looking for names like Benicio?
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 Benicio to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Benicio against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).