Cao or CAO may refer to:

Companies or organizations

• Air China Cargo, ICAO airline designator CAO

• CA Oradea, Romanian football club

• CA Osasuna, Spanish football club

• Canadian Association of Optometrists

• Canadian Association of Orthodontists

• Central Allocation Office, cross border electricity transmission capacity auction office

• Central Applications Office, Irish organisation that oversees college applications

• Civil Aviation Office of Poland

• Iran Civil Aviation Organization

• Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the United States House of Representatives

• Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman, accountability arm of the World Bank

• Council for Adult Education, later Centre for Adult Education, in Victoria, Australia

• Commission on Audit

Job titles

• Chief Academic Officer of a University, often titled the Provost

• Chief accounting officer of a company

• Chief administrative officer of a company

• Chief analytics officer of a company

• Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman, an independent office that reviews complaints

Names

• Cao (Chinese surname) (曹)

• Cao (Vietnamese surname)

People

• Cao (footballer, born 1968), Portuguese footballer

• Cao Cao (died 220), founder of Cao Wei, China

• Cao Hamburger (born 1962), Brazilian director, screenwriter and producer

• Cao Pi (c.187226), emperor of Cao Wei, China

• Cao Yu (19101996), Chinese playwright

• Cao Yupeng (born 1990), Chinese snooker player

• Carlos Alberto Caó (1941–2018), Brazilian activist, lawyer, and politician

• Diogo Cão, a 15th-century Portuguese explorer

• Joseph Cao (born 1967), United States politician

• Lady of Cao, a Moche mummy, Peru

• Longbing Cao (born 1969), data scientist

• Pierre Cao (1937–2026), Luxembourgish composer and conductor

Places

• Cao (state), a Chinese vassal state of the Zhou Dynasty (1046 - 221 BCE)

• Cao County, Shandong, China

• Cao Wei, also called Wei, one of the regimes that competed for control of China during the Three Kingdoms period (220 - 280 CE)

• Magdalena de Cao, a town on the north coast of Peru, surrounded by major archaeological sites, c. 50km north of the city of Trujillo

Other uses

• Cao (bull), a legendary bull in Meitei mythology

• CaO, the chemical symbol for calcium oxide

• Cão!, an album by Portuguese band Ornatos Violeta

• CA Osasuna, a Spanish sport club

• a Child Arrangement Order under English family law

• Chlorophyllide-a oxygenase, an enzyme

• Cold air outbreak, an intense and/or prolonged cold weather wave of air

• Controller Access Object, as described in the ORiN robot interface