Bolaño

surname · Latin script

Meaning: a type of historical cannonball (kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations))

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 6 countries

/boˈla.ɲo/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Bolaño is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. Bolaño is also written Болано in Cyrillic.

  • COColombia≈1 in 3.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 10K
  • ARArgentina1 in 15K

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.

Colombia (inferred from the name graph)

≈14,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
127 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Colombia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Bolaño in other scripts: Cyrillic

(measured from records)
BolañoLatin(measured from records)
БоланоBolaño in Cyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Bolano in PH Philippines.

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.

How to pronounce Bolaño

  • Spanish:/boˈla.ɲo/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

a type of historical cannonball

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Bolaño is found

(measured from records)

Bolaño 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 Bolaño is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#563≈14,000 est.≈1 in 3.7K5Bolaño43
AR Argentina—2,9381 in 15K2.9KBolaño33
VE Venezuela#889≈2,700 est.≈1 in 10K—Bolaño19
ES Spain—1,4981 in 33K1.5KBolaño59
PH Philippines—≈1,500 est.≈1 in 78K—Bolano32
UY Uruguay—1141 in 30K114Bolaño6

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); the co-datosgov-candidates register; 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)

Bolaño is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Bolano

  • Turkish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain

    Also written Bolano

  • Norwegian name7 spellings in the group

    Languages: Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Bolano, Bolańo

22 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.

Notable people with this name

(measured from records)
1940196019802000Roberto Bolaño, b. 1953Jorge Bolaño, b. 1977Luiseth Materán, b. 1996

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 Bolaño,Dear Bolaño, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Bolaño,Hello, (English)

Evidence

(measured from records)

8 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 6 countries.

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

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Bolaño mean, and where does it come from?
a type of historical cannonball Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Bolaño?
In Spanish /boˈla.ɲo/ (Wiktionary).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Bolaño?
Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Bolaño in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bolaño. After it come Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and Philippines; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Bolaño?
In Argentina, the national register counted 2,938 people named Bolaño, about 1 in 15 thousand residents.
How common is Bolaño compared with other names?
In Colombia, Bolaño is the 563rd most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bolaño?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bola%C3%B1o

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, “Bolaño” — ranked 111th in Colombia (the co-datosgov-candidates register). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Bolaño parses inside a full name →