Name Awesome

Masato

Boys' name

Right, proper

Masato has been given to 462 babies in the U.S. since 1912. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1924, with 25 recorded.

Babies named Masato, 2020

1 in 668,000

Masato over time, 1880–2025

Boys
010203018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Masato: meaning, origin, and history

Right, proper

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Masato means

Masato means “right, proper”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Masato is used in Japanese.

Another recorded pronunciation is /mä.sä.to̞/ for Masato.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 462 boys were recorded with the name Masato between 1912 and 2020. Its highest annual count was 25 in 1924; its best national rank was #1,235 in 1913.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Masato?

Masato had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2020, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2020
1 in 668,000
5 of 3,342,313 births
Among boys only
1 in 345,000
<0.01% of boys
Rank, 2020
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
463,344 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Masato sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Liam (20,818)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2020 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 463,344 children born in 2020 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Masato. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Masatos were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Masato was born before 1925 — so the typical Masato is around 100 today.

Median birth year
1925
About 100 years old
Biggest decade
1910s
30.3% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
27.3%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
158
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1910s — 30.3% of all recorded uses (140).

Is Masato rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1924 (25)
Years since peak
101
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
19.6% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,235
1913

Spellings of Masato

Masato is not the most common spelling — Makaio is, with 31.6% against Masato's 10.9%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Masato is used

Across 1910–2025, Masato was most concentrated in Hawaii — about 1 in 3,226 boys, against 1 in 74,996 across all states with data. It was least common in California (1 in —).

031 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Hawaii1 in 3,226
  2. 2California1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Masato has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Masato around the world

Where Masato ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2017–2017
    #4,812
    in 2017
  • France
    2010–2010
    #6,096
    in 2010
  • South Australia
    1994–2008
    #726
    in 2008

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Masato by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a boy's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#1,235
1913
Peak year
1924
25 that year
First recorded
1912
Last recorded
2020
All-time count
462
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Masato

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

MasterMassonMastonMasiahMassaiMasaruMasudMasaiMasamiMasakiMasiyahMassiahMasynMaseMasihMasinMinatoMastenMasenMasaoMassieMasaniMasirMassimo

Sibling names for Masato

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Masato

Top names of 1924, Masato's peak yearThe 1920s in fullOther names that peaked in 1913Boys' names starting with M