Short form of Josephine or Joanna, from Hebrew meaning 'God is gracious' or 'God will increase'.
Jo is a name of deceptive simplicity. As a given name in its own right, it appears in Scandinavian tradition as a form of Johannes, carrying the Hebrew meaning "God is gracious" (from Yohanan). But in the English-speaking world, Jo is most powerfully understood as an independent name — short, clear, and unmistakably its own thing rather than merely an abbreviation.
The name's cultural life was transformed in 1868 when Louisa May Alcott published "Little Women" and gave the world Josephine "Jo" March — the restless, writing-obsessed, trouser-wearing second sister who refused to be confined by Victorian femininity. Jo March became one of literature's most beloved characters and arguably one of its most influential: she gave generations of girls a protagonist who claimed intellectual and creative ambition without apology. The name Jo absorbed that spirit entirely.
Generations of parents named daughters Jo — or kept it as a middle name — in tribute to that archetype. The name has always carried a gender-fluid ease. Jo is equally at home on a boy in 19th-century rural America (where it appeared as a masculine name in census records) and on a contemporary girl who goes by nothing else.
It requires no explanation and no spelling clarification. In an age of maximalist names, Jo's radical brevity feels like a deliberate aesthetic statement — confident enough to need only two letters.