Bo
A Slavic name that means "to live, to dwell". Only around 150 people in Poland carry it, most of them men, so meeting one stays memorable.
Bo Pronunciation
Bo is pronounced BO (/bɔ/).
What Bo means
Where Bo comes from and what it has meant to the people who carry it.
Bo comes from a Slavic root that means to live, to dwell. Two letters hold the whole idea. Longer Slavic names run to three and four syllables, and Bo does the same work in one.
The name feels most at home in Scandinavia. There Bo grew from Old Norse búa, to reside or keep a house. The two roots meet far back, in a Proto-Indo-European source for being and growing. The Swedish poet Bo Bergman, born in 1869, wrote under the name into old age in Stockholm.
Bo has no diminutive and no variant to hide behind. There is nothing to shorten. On a Polish school register it sits as two letters, read in a single breath, next to names three times its length. Short, and meaning to live.
How many people are named Bo
1 in 160498 men in Poland is named Bo. 151 people carry it in the 2025 register: rank #2642 among male names.
Bo as a middle name
Bo is a first name for 151 men in Poland and a middle name for another 34, an 82/18 split. In the men's middle-name ranking it sits 1401st, between Andrii (34) and Chigozie (34).