Thato

given name · Southern Sotho · Latin script

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

Thato is a given name, most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is the 81st most common given name. It appears chiefly in Southern Sotho and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: desire.

rarermore common
  • ZASouth Africa1 in 1.4K◐
  • BWBotswana1 in 754
  • LSLesotho1 in 20K

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

≈108 ●

across 3 countries

2 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
76 ●

24K records

Official registry-verified

1 in 205K ◐

Albania

Spellings & scripts●

ThatoLatin · Southern Sotho●9.4K records
타토Hangul · Korean●1 records

Locally spelled Tato in ES Spain.

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●

desire

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Thato is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ZA South Africa#8123,95323K rec.——Thato76
US United States—419310 rec.—223Thato45
BW Botswana#1109347 rec.—listedThato27
GB United Kingdom—10583 rec.——Thato21
LS Lesotho#84867 rec.—15Thato11
BR Brazil—47△7 rec.1 in 4.5M187Thato9
PL Poland—46—1 in 832K46——
AU Australia—4543 rec.—1Thato21
IN India—2717 rec.—1.3KThato5
DE Germany—2224 rec.——Thato16
CA Canada—2127 rec.——Thato8
PH Philippines—1614 rec.——Thato3

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

Languages●

  • Southern Sotho9.4K34%
  • English7.2K26%
  • Swahili2.2K8%
  • Afrikaans1.9K7%
  • Korean1.7K6%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Southern Sotho9,36134%
English7,17026%
Swahili2,2148%
Afrikaans1,8877%
Korean1,7026%

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◐

Thato is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Thai surname196 records spelled Thato10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, South Africa

    Also written ตาโต, ทาโต, ถาโต, Tatou, ตาโต้

  • Japanese given name68 records spelled Thato2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in South Africa, Japan

    Also written Thätö

31 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●

Thato is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • Having the will to achieve,

    as a nameThe African book of names

  • In Tswana, love

    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.

Evidence●

Attested in 4 sources across 4 countries.

Official registers attesting Thato
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
LS LesothoLesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists202215#8
AU AustraliaSA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present)19861—
LS LesothoLesotho IEC 2022 National Assembly candidate lists20221#13
NG NigeriaThe African Book of Names (Hodari, 2003)———
BW BotswanaMasakhaNER 2.0 — Zimbabwe (sna)———

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 5 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Thato?
We estimate roughly 108 people bear Thato (counting its spellings and scripts) across 3 countries in our records.
In which country does Thato have the most bearers?
Thato is most frequently recorded in South Africa, where it is most often spelled thato.
How common is Thato compared with other names?
In South Africa, Thato is the 81st most common given name of 215,346 given names recorded there.
Is Thato a male or female name?
Thato is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
What does the name Thato mean?
Recorded meaning: desire
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/thato

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, “Thato” — the 81st most common given name in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Thato parses inside a full name →