Barrera

surname · Latin script

Meaning: lived near a gate or fence, from Sp

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/bareɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Barrera is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In El Salvador it is the 74th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 433(inferred from the name graph)
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 587
  • COColombia≈1 in 815

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

60,998 people, 2010

#739 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
403 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 433 (inferred from the name graph)

El Salvador, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BarreraLatin(measured from records)
БаррераCyrillic(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

lived near a gate or fence, from Sp. barrera barrier (a deriv. of Barr 2). 2. topographic name for someone who lived by a clay-pit, Sp. barrera, barrero (a deriv. of barro mud, clay; cf. Barros 1 and Bard 6). Cogn.: Port.: Barreira.

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Barrera counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Barrera is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—60,9981 in 5.5K61KBarrera403
CO Colombia#100≈60,000 est.≈1 in 81557Barrera180
AR Argentina#14348,4561 in 93948KBarrera116
ES Spain#19823,7841 in 2.1K24KBarrera183
CL Chile#157≈20,000 est.≈1 in 931—Barrera131
SV El Salvador#74≈15,000 est.≈1 in 43316KBarrera60
NI Nicaragua#78≈11,000 est.≈1 in 587—Barrera34
UY Uruguay—4,9571 in 6835K—46

60,998 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Barrera is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Canada, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Barrerá, Bárrérá, Bärrerä, Bãrrērä, Bặřřĕřặ

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Barréra

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Peru

    Also written Bärrerä, Barréra, Bärrërä

  • Lao surname17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Chile

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Barera, บาร์เรร่า, Bärrërä, Bárrérá, Bârrêrâ

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Poland, Spain, Argentina

    Also written Bärręrä

49 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Barrera is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, barrier

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In French, third-person singular future of barrer

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

19201940196019802000Antonio Imbert Barrera, b. 1920Misael Pastrana Borrero, b. 1923David Barrera, b. 1968Magüi Serna, b. 1979Pablo Edson Barrera, b. 1987Juan Barrera, b. 1989Melissa Barrera, b. 1990Shakira Barrera, b. 1990Álex Barrera, b. 1991Neisi Dajomes, b. 1998

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalEstimado/a Barrera,Dear Barrera, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Barrera,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 37 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Barrera
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201061K#550
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202059K#557
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—48K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200044K#713
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—24K#221
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—24K#221
SV El SalvadorEl Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived)—16K#79
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—5K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—57#61
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the name Barrera come from?
lived near a gate or fence, from Sp. barrera barrier (a deriv. of Barr 2). 2. topographic name for someone who lived by a clay-pit, Sp. barrera, barrero (a deriv. of barro mud, clay; cf. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
How do you pronounce Barrera?
A machine transcription gives /bareɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Barrera mean?
Recorded meaning: lived near a gate or fence, from Sp.
In which country does Barrera have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 61 thousand people named Barrera, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled barrera.
How common is the name Barrera?
In the United States, the national register counted 60,998 people named Barrera in 2010, about 1 in 5.5 thousand residents.
How common is Barrera compared with other names?
In El Salvador, Barrera is the 74th most common surname of 35,145 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Barrera?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/barrera

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Barrera” — the 74th most common surname in El Salvador. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Barrera parses inside a full name →