Quick Facts
Biography
Otto is a masculine German given name. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants Audo, Odo, Udo) of Germanic names beginning in aud-, an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded from the 7th century (Odo, son of Uro, courtier of Sigebert III). It was the name of three 10th-century German kings, the first of whom was Otto I the Great, the first Holy Roman Emperor, founder of the Ottonian dynasty. The Gothic form of the prefix was auda- (as in e.g. Audaþius), the Anglo-Saxon form was ead- (as in e.g. Eadmund), the Old Norse form was auð-. The given name Otis arose from an English surname, which was in turn derived from Ode, a variant form of Odo, Otto. Due to Otto von Bismarck, the given name Otto was strongly associated with the German Empire in the later 19th century. It was comparatively frequently given in the United States (presumably in German American families) during the 1880s to 1890s, remaining in the top 100 most popular masculine given names in the US throughout 1880–1898, but its popularity decreased significantly after 1900 with increasing anti-German sentiment leading up to World War I; it fell below rank 200 in 1919, below rank 500 in 1947, and below rank 1000 in 1975; it re-entered the top-1000 most popular given names in the US only in the 2010s, ranking 696th as of 2013.
People called Otto
Medieval
- Otto (mayor of the palace) (died 643 or 644), mayor of the palace of Austrasia briefly in the mid-7th century
- Otto I, Duke of Saxony (851–912)
- the Ottonian, dynasty
- Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912–973)
- Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor (955–983)
- Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor (980–1002)
- Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1175/1176–1218)
- Otto of Freising (c. 1114–1158), bishop and chronicler
Modern
- Otto Dowling (1881–1946), 25th Governor of American Samoa
- Otto of Greece (1815–1867), King of Greece
- Otto of Bavaria (1848–1916), King of Bavaria
- Otto Adler, president of the Jewish Association of Romania
- Otto T. Bannard (1854–1929), American attorney, businessman and philanthropist.
- Otto Frank (1889–1980), German-born Swiss business man, father of Anne Frank
- Otto Freundlich (1878–1943), German painter and sculptor
- Otto Graham (1921–2003), professional American football and basketball player
- Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1926–2009), German politician
- Otto Grotewohl (1894–1964), East German politician
- Otto Herschmann (1877–1942), Austrian Olympic fencing and swimming medalist
- Otto Knows (born 1989), Swedish DJ
- Otto Klemperer (1885–1973), German-born conductor and composer
- Otto Kretschmer (1912–1998), German World War II U-Boat Captain
- Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896), German aviator
- Otto Peterson (1960–2014), American comedian (Otto & George ventriloquism act)
- Otto Plath (1885–1940), father of American Poet, Sylvia Plath, and entomologist
- Otto Preminger (1905–1986), Austro–Hungarian-born American film director
- Otto Rehhagel (born 1938), German football coach
- Otto Scheff (1889–1956), Austrian Olympic swimming champion
- Otto Schmitt (field hockey) (born 1965), Argentine field hockey goalkeeper
- Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975), Austrian-born Waffen-SS commando
- Otto Soglow (1900–1975), American cartoonist
- Otto van Verschuer (1927–2014), Dutch politician
- Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck (1897–1975), German politician and diplomat
- Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), Prussian/German statesman
- Otto von Habsburg (1912–2011), head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine from 1922 to 2007
- Otto Waalkes (born 1948), German comedian and actor
- Otto Wahle (1879–1963), Austrian-born American Olympic swimming medalist and Hall of Fame
- Otto F. Walter (1928–1994), Swiss journalist, author and publisher
- Otto Frederick Warmbier (born 1994), American student imprisoned in North Korea
- Otto Weininger (1880–1903), Christian Austrian philosopher
- Otto Dix (1891–1969), German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war
- Otto Maximiliano Pereira de Cordeiro Ferreira (born 1968), Brazilian singer-songwriter, drummer and TV presenter
- Otto Wichterle (1913-1998), Czech chemist, best known for his invention of modern soft contact lenses.
Characters
- Herr Otto Flick, a character in the BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!
- Otto Maddox, a character in the movie Repo Man, played by Emilio Estevez
- Otto Mann, character on the animated TV series The Simpsons
- Otto Meyer, a character in the 1963 movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, played by Phil Silvers
- Otto Normalverbraucher, a home coming soldier in a 1948 movie played by Gert Fröbe, is used in German to denote the average consumer (literally) or the small man on the street
- Otto Octavius, fictional Marvel Comics supervillain otherwise known as Doctor Octopus. One of Spider-Man's nemeses
- Otto Osworth, a character in the Cartoon Network animated TV series Time Squad
- Otto, Gothel's pet talking ferret in the 2002 direct-to-video Barbie film Barbie as Rapunzel, voiced by Peter Kelamis
- Otto Rocket, the main character of Nickelodeon's Rocket Power
- Otto the Dog, a dog belonging to one of the characters in the comic strip Beetle Bailey
- Otto the Gorilla, Dr. Satan's fretful right-hand man in Rob Zombie's satire comedy The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
- Otto the Autopilot, the blow-up autopilot doll in Airplane! (1980)
- Otto West, a character in the 1988 movie A Fish Called Wanda
- Otto Malpense, the main character in the H.I.V.E. series by Mark Walden
- Otto Delaney, a character in the drama Sons of Anarchy on the American TV network FX, played by series creator Kurt Sutter
- Otto "Unbreakable" Zander, from the video game series X-COM Enemy Unknown
- Otto the Orange, Syracuse University Mascot
- Otto Wattenbarger, a character in Bodie Thoene's Zion Covenant book series
Animals
- Otto (dog) (1989–2010), world's oldest dog
- Otocinclus, Sucking catfish, often known as 'Otto'