Yao
The boy's name Yao has been in the national records since 1984, with 108 births to its name. It has not appeared in the national data since 2023. About 110 Yaos are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Yao
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 108
- Estimated living today
- 110
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 1984
- Best rank
- 3,925th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1984
How old the living Yaos are
born that year still alive today
Of the 108 babies given the name since 1984, about 110 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Notable Yaos
- Yao Ming (born 1980)Chinese basketball player
- Yao Junior Sènaya (born 1984)Togolese footballer
- Yao Aziawonou (born 1979)Togolese footballer
- Yao Chen (born 1979)Chinese actress
- Zhong Yao (151–230)Chinese official and calligrapher
- Yao Beina (1981–2015)Chinese female singer
- Yao Lee (1922–2019)Chinese singer
- Yao Xing (366–416)Later Qin emperor
People named Yao with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Yao is most common
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1984
The most popular boys’ names the year Yao peaked:
Yao elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Yao | 155 | 2,437th |
| England and Wales boys | Yao | 7 | 3,865th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Yao among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Yao | — | 13 |
| Finland boys | Yao | — | 6 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.