Santino
Latin at root: "little saint", reaching Polish through Italian. Only about 144 men here carry it, so most Poles have never met one, and newborn counts are slowly ticking up.
Santino Pronunciation
Santino is pronounced sahn-TEE-no (/sanˈtinɔ/).
What Santino means
Where Santino comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Santino comes from the Latin sanctus, meaning holy, by way of the Italian santo, saint. The suffix -ino shrinks the word to something small and fond, which gives the meaning carried here: little saint, mały święty. The name began as a diminutive and later stood on its own as a full given name.
It offers no side doors. Santino has no recorded diminutives or variants of its own, so the name a child receives is the name he keeps.
Italy gives the name its home. The most widely known bearer is fictional: Santino Corleone, called Sonny, the eldest son in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather from 1969. On a Polish school register, Santino would sit among the Antonios and Fabians, an Italian marker on a Kraków class list. The tie to sanctus stays legible even there. A reader who knows a little Latin will hear the saint inside the small word, and read it as little saint.
How many people are named Santino
1 in 148237 men in Poland is named Santino. 144 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2721 among male names.
Santino's popularity over time
4 boys were given the name in 2025, ranking #1138 among newborns. It has been climbing since 2021.
Where parents choose Santino
Santino is most popular in Kuyavian-Pomeranian, 1876% above the national average (2 boys born 2019–2025).
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian
+1,876%1 in 54,690 babies
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Kuyavian-Pomeranian+1,876% 2 born1 in 54,690 babies+1,876%
Santino as a middle name
Santino is a first name for 144 men in Poland and a middle name for another 44, a 77/23 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1187th, between Sandro (44) and Sebastián (44).
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#1185 Sam44
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#1186 Sandro44
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#1187 Santino44
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#1188 Sebastián44
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#1189 Spencer44