Boo

surname · English · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Boo is a surname, with more bearers in Sweden than in any other country. It appears chiefly in English and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: A loud exclamation intended to scare someone.

rarermore common
  • SESweden1 in 121◐
  • AUAustralia1 in 14K
  • MYMalaysia1 in 19K

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈114K ●

across 9 countries

Sources
354 ●

211K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 121 ◐

Sweden

Spellings & scripts●

BoLatin · English●155K records

Locally spelled Bo in US United States, SE Sweden, CN China and 13 more.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin●

A loud exclamation intended to scare someone. Usually used when one has been hidden from the target, and then appears unexpectedly.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Boo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
SE Sweden#42284,009△1.5K rec.1 in 12184KBo87
CN China—37,435943 rec.——Bo68
US United States—16,006123K rec.1 in 21K16KBo354
DK Denmark—10,723△27 rec.1 in 54711K—4
AU Australia—8,2439.3K rec.——Bo134
DE Germany—6,15414K rec.—1Bo127
FR France—5,61811K rec.—50Bo197
GB United Kingdom—4,2114.9K rec.——Bo114
CA Canada—3,4822.9K rec.—17Bo104
AR Argentina—3,4758.1K rec.—777Boo64
MY Malaysia—3,0113.4K rec.——Boo56
PH Philippines—2,5157.4K rec.——Boo36

Roughly 84K people in Sweden bear this name (about 1 in 121). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • English14K32%
  • Spanish9K21%
  • Malay3.5K8%
  • French2.2K5%
  • Vietnamese1.6K4%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
English14,05832%
Spanish9,03521%
Malay3,4988%
French2,1995%
Vietnamese1,5964%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Boo is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Malay surname14K records spelled Boo3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, Indonesia, United States, Singapore

    Languages: Malay, Indonesian

    Also written Böö

  • Korean surname3.9K records spelled Boo6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Korea, United States, Malaysia, South Africa

    Also written 보오, Bw, B-W, Bóo

  • Hindi surname1.7K records spelled Boo3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Bôô

  • Chinese surname1.4K records spelled Boo2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, United States, Taiwan, Singapore

    Also written Bo-O

  • a separate surname1.0K records spelled Boo15 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Malaysia, India, China

    Also written Bồô, Boö, Bôô, Bốố, Bộô

  • Thai surname928 records spelled Boo52 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, United States, Laos, Canada

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written บุญถนอม, โบว์, โบ, บุญตานนท์, Boonthanom

61 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Boo is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • unexplained.

    as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

  • In dag, What! Used to comment on something that amazes, or in times of excitement

    as a wordDagbani Dictionary CD

  • In Swedish, a community in Nacka, Stockholm, central Sweden

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Latin, to cry aloud, bellow, roar; bray

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Filipino, obsolete spelling of buo

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Over time●

05010015020020002005201020152020183 · 2014

Show as table
Boo in SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023), Sweden, 1999–2020
Yearrecords
1999181
2000179
2001175
2002175
2003172
2004170
2005174
2006173
2007172
2008173
2009176
2010176
2011181
2012180
2013182
2014183
2015183
2016179
2017176
2018172
2019172
2020172

SE SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) — 22 years between 1999–2020. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1850190019502000Sigrid Boo, b. 1898Xosé Bar Boo, b. 1922Ben Boo, b. 1925Luis Barboo, b. 1927Katherine Boo, b. 1964Boo Suk-jong, b. 1964Boo Ji-young, b. 1971Boo Seong-cheol, b. 1972Bu Yong-chan, b. 1989Boo Seung-kwan, b. 1998

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

Evidence●

Attested in 28 sources across 14 countries.

Official registers attesting Boo
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—1.2K#3,813
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—1.2K#3,813
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020712#34,306
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—588#2,485
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls—528#55
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020518#12,965
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010508#42,640
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020425#12,965
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000388#50,572
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—296#3,009
IN IndiaInstate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls—195#18,040
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—190—

Reference works 4

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 76 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Boo?
We estimate roughly 114 thousand people bear Boo (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Boo have the most bearers?
We estimate about 84 thousand people bear Boo in Sweden, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled bo.
Where is Boo most common?
Boo is densest in Sweden, where the national register counts about 1 in 121 people carrying it.
How common is Boo compared with other names?
In Sweden, Boo is the 422nd most common given name of 36,824 given names recorded there.
What does the name Boo mean?
Recorded meaning: A loud exclamation intended to scare someone.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boo

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.

About this data

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Boo” — the 422nd most common given name in Sweden. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Boo parses inside a full name →