Name Awesome

Yoko

Girls' name

Alternate transcription of Kanji

Yoko has been given to 476 babies in the U.S. since 1923. 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 1981, with 24 recorded.

Babies named Yoko, 2021

1 in 678,000

Yoko over time, 1880–2025

Girls
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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Yoko: meaning, origin, and history

Alternate transcription of Kanji

Japanese

What Yoko means

Yoko is a alternate transcription of Kanji.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Yoko is used in Japanese.

Another recorded pronunciation is /jo̞ː.ko̞/ for Yoko.

Dictionary etymologyReferences, data & attribution

Borrowed from Japanese ようこ (Yōko), a female given name with many variant kanji spellings.

Excerpt from Wiktionary: Yoko (English) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Origin, language, and formation

Yoko is used in English and French. Its origins include Japanese.

Yoko comes through Japanese ようこ.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Kanji.

Pronunciation and spelling

In French, Yoko is pronounced /jo.ko/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 476 girls were recorded with the name Yoko between 1923 and 2021. Its highest annual count was 24 in 1981; its best national rank was #2,681 in 1933.

How common is Yoko?

Yoko had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2021, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2021
1 in 678,000
5 of 3,389,958 births
Among girls only
1 in 328,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2021
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
469,949 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Yoko sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2021 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 469,949 children born in 2021 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Yoko. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Yokos were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Yoko was born before 1983 — so the typical Yoko is around 42 today.

Median birth year
1983
About 42 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
26.9% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
21.2%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
419
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 26.9% of all recorded uses (128).

Is Yoko 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 1981 (24)
Years since peak
44
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
20.7% average annual change
Best rank ever
#2,681
1933

Spellings of Yoko

Yoko is not the most common spelling — Coco is, with 18.9% against Yoko's 4.8%.

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 Yoko is used

Across 1910–2025, Yoko was most concentrated in Hawaii — about 1 in 100,000 girls, against 1 in 568,256 across all states with data. It was least common in New York (1 in —).

01 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Hawaii1 in 100,000
  2. 2California1 in —
  3. 3New York1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls 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. Yoko has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Yoko around the world

Where Yoko 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
    2010–2010
    #5,707
    in 2010
  • France
    1986–2025
    #6,198
    in 2025
  • Canada
    2018–2018
    #3,384
    in 2018

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Canada. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Yoko by the numbers

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

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#2,681
1933
Peak year
1981
24 that year
First recorded
1923
Last recorded
2021
All-time count
476
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Yoko

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

KokoMiyokoKiyokoKyokoHirokoChiyokoToyokoMomokoNaokoTomokoShokoRyokoSayokoSatokoYokastaKiokoKayoko

Sibling names for Yoko

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 Yoko

Top names of 1981, Yoko's peak yearThe 1980s in fullOther names that peaked in 1933Girls' names starting with YJapanese Girl Names