'‘Ito’' as a first name?

Does anybody knows, if ''Ito'' can be used as a first name as well? If yes, what is the meaning of Ito?

No. Ito can be a family name only.

Oliver,

I don't think it is common now, but Ito (with a short "o") can be a female name written in a number of ways.
If you are interested, you can look up the different ways of writing it in Jim Breen's web dictionary, which also includes a large database of names.
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

Like most people around the world, the Japanese are free to name your child how ever they want (with a few exceptions on the Chinese characters they can use).

So Ito as a first name is possible. But you can't know the meaning of a name for sure unless you ask the name holder or the parents.

But "ito" means "string," and I can imagine a female having such a name, especially in generations older than my great grandmother.

Btw, Ito is a common family name, but is pronounced "itou" while the world meaing "string" is pronounced without the sustain.

incorrect: world meaing "string"

correct: word meaning "string"

Sorry.

yes it can and has, strangely enough my grandfather recieved the name ito, his father immigrated to our country and the name does stand for thread/string, he intended the name in our culture to be symbolic of life/time/destiny.
i am unsure as cannot recall but i know it was to mean the japanese symbolic of thread/string and not the literal.