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The names of Brazil
What names do Brazilians carry? IBGE's open data, collected in the 2010 Census, answers with exact counts: the table below lists the national top 20 of each sex, and the timeline that follows shows who led every birth decade, from the 1930s to the 2000s. Every decade has its own page with the full top list and the comparison with the one before.
Brazil's top 20, by sex
| # | Girls | People | Boys | People |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maria | 11,694,738 | Jose | 5,732,508 |
| 2 | Ana | 3,079,729 | Joao | 2,971,935 |
| 3 | Francisca | 721,637 | Antonio | 2,567,494 |
| 4 | Antonia | 588,783 | Francisco | 1,765,197 |
| 5 | Adriana | 565,621 | Carlos | 1,483,121 |
| 6 | Juliana | 562,589 | Paulo | 1,417,907 |
| 7 | Marcia | 551,855 | Pedro | 1,213,557 |
| 8 | Fernanda | 531,607 | Lucas | 1,116,818 |
| 9 | Patricia | 529,446 | Luiz | 1,102,927 |
| 10 | Aline | 509,869 | Marcos | 1,101,126 |
| 11 | Sandra | 479,230 | Luis | 931,530 |
| 12 | Camila | 469,851 | Gabriel | 922,744 |
| 13 | Amanda | 464,624 | Rafael | 814,709 |
| 14 | Bruna | 460,770 | Daniel | 706,527 |
| 15 | Jessica | 456,472 | Marcelo | 690,098 |
| 16 | Leticia | 434,056 | Bruno | 663,271 |
| 17 | Julia | 430,067 | Eduardo | 628,539 |
| 18 | Luciana | 429,769 | Felipe | 615,924 |
| 19 | Vanessa | 417,512 | Raimundo | 611,174 |
| 20 | Mariana | 381,778 | Rodrigo | 598,825 |
The leaders of each birth decade
| Decade | Girls' leader | Margin over runner-up | Boys' leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1930s | Maria (746,057) | 13.3x | Jose (310,427) |
| 1940s | Maria (1,481,766) | 14.7x | Jose (647,405) |
| 1950s | Maria (2,469,011) | 13.5x | Jose (1,080,656) |
| 1960s | Maria (2,488,835) | 8.5x | Jose (1,239,593) |
| 1970s | Maria (1,612,041) | 3.8x | Jose (938,890) |
| 1980s | Maria (915,119) | 1.7x | Jose (656,217) |
| 1990s | Maria (541,437) | 1.0x | Lucas (513,021) |
| 2000s | Maria (1,105,524) | 1.2x | Joao (787,738) |
What the numbers tell
Maria is the name of 11,694,738 Brazilian women and Jose of 5,732,508 Brazilian men: few countries have a pair this dominant in their registries. Adding up the national rankings, the 8 birth decades and the 27 states, this series tracks 141 distinct names (87 female and 54 male).
When did Maria stop being absolute? The numbers answer: in the 1940s, Maria was registered 14.7 times as often as the second girls' name; the margin shrank decade after decade until, in the 1980s, it dropped below 2 times for the first time, and in the 1990s it hit its minimum of 1.0 times the frequency of Ana, a statistical tie. Maria never lost first place, but the reign turned into a contest.
Among boys the story is different: Jose reigned from the 1930s through the 1980s, and then Lucas took over in the 1990s and Joao took over in the 2000s. The boys' throne, unlike the girls', actually changed hands.
Source: IBGE (Brazil's national statistics institute), 2010 Census, open data. The numbers come from the 2010 Demographic Census and count people alive and living in Brazil that year, grouped by their decade of birth: the oldest decades reflect only those who made it to 2010. Everything here is aggregate public statistics, with no individual records. Snapshot of 2026-07-10.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources