Bolaños
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 8 countries · latest register: INEC, 2024
/boˈla.ɲos/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Bolaños is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. In Costa Rica it is the 69th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Spanish Bolaños. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .
- CRCosta Rica1 in 238(measured from records)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 1K
- COColombia≈1 in 1.2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bolaños itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Colombia (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 303 (measured from records)
- 1 in 238 (inferred from the name graph)
≈45,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Bolanos in US United States.
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)From Spanish Bolaños. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .
Cited for this meaning 1
Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Bolaños is found
(measured from records)Bolaños 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | #277 | ≈45,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 22 | Bolaños | 87 |
| CR Costa Rica | #69 | 21,448 | 1 in 238 | 21K | Bolaños | 75 |
| EC Ecuador | #264 | 12,357 | 1 in 1.4K | 12K | Bolaños | 39 |
| US United States | — | 11,829 | 1 in 28K | 12K | Bolanos | 303 |
| MX Mexico | #799 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | 515 | Bolaños | 119 |
| GT Guatemala | #117 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Bolaños | 37 |
| SV El Salvador | #179 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 998 | — | Bolaños | 39 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names. 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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Bolaños 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 Filipino, a surname from Spanish, mostly found on people of Bicolano heritage
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In bik, a surname from Spanish, common in Albay (especially Tabaco)
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)- Enrique Bolañosb. 1928NIPresident of Nicaragua from 2002 to 2007
- Chespiritob. 1929MXnot in their usual nameMexican actor, comedian and producer (1929–2014)
- Christian Bolañosb. 1984CRCosta Rican association football player
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)Evidence
(measured from records)14 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 8 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bolaños mean, and where does it come from?
- From Spanish Bolaños. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos . Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Bolaños?
- In Spanish /boˈla.ɲos/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Bolaños?
- Mondonomo estimates about 45 thousand people named Bolaños in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bolaños. After it come Costa Rica, Ecuador, United States and Mexico; the country table on this page ranks them.
- Where is Bolaños most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bolaños is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 238 people — even though Colombia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bolaños?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 21,448 people named Bolaños, about 1 in 238 residents.
- How common is Bolaños compared with other names?
- In Colombia, Bolaños is the 277th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bolaños?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/bola%C3%B1osThe 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, “Bolaños” — the 277th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.