Diogo

Meaning of Diogo

Diogo, a masculine appellation of Portuguese provenance, represents the Lusophone equivalent of the Spanish Diego and ultimately derives from the Latin Iacobus—a rendering of the Hebrew Yaʿaqōb. Phonetically realized as /diˈo.ɣu/ in contemporary European and Brazilian Portuguese, it is characterized by an initial voiced alveolar stop, a diphthongal vowel nucleus, and a velar approximant in its closing syllable. Historically, Diogo gained prominence through its association with key figures of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries—most notably the fifteenth-century navigator Diogo Cão, whose coastal surveys materially broadened early modern cartographic understanding. In the United States, the name has sustained a modest yet stable presence among newborn males, registering between seven and eleven occurrences annually from 2020 to 2024 and consistently occupying a position near the 900th rank in national name statistics. This enduring specificity to Lusophone heritage, coupled with its gradual adoption in anglophone contexts, renders Diogo an appellation that balance ancestral tradition with a distinctly modern, transnational resonance.