Bravo
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: fierce-tempered man, from Sp., Port, bravo fierce, violent (probably from L barbarus barbarian, ruffian; cf. Barb¬ ary)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bɾabo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bravo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Ecuador than in any other country, where it is the 16th most common surname.
- ECEcuador1 in 177(measured from records)
- CLChile≈1 in 362
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 569
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.
- Ecuador (measured from records)
- #517 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 423 (measured from records)
- 1 in 177 (inferred from the name graph)
95,501 people, 2024
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a fierce or violent man
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 11 languages in the etymology graph.
How Bravo is read(measured from records)
Bravo is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish82%
fierce-tempered man, from Sp., Port, bravo fierce, violent (probably from L barbarus barbarian, ruffian; cf. Barb¬ ary). The sense ‘courageous’, ‘brave’ did not emerge until the 16th cent., and is therefore too late to be reflected in the surname. Cogn.: Flem.: De Brave. Dim.: It.: Bravetti. Pej.: Fr.: Bravard.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
angry, furious
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English8.8%
from a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a fierce or violent man
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A hired soldier; an assassin; a desperado.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Bravo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | #16 | 95,501 | 1 in 177 | 96K | Bravo | 100 |
| AR Argentina | #88 | 66,790 | 1 in 681 | 67K | Bravo | 120 |
| VE Venezuela | #102 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 569 | — | Bravo | 97 |
| CL Chile | #45 | ≈50,000 est. | ≈1 in 362 | — | Bravo | 171 |
| PE Peru | #84 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 681 | — | Bravo | 118 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 5,328 | 1 in 636 | 5.3K | — | 44 |
95,501 people counted by INEC — civil registry names, 2024. 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); INEC — civil registry names; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Bravo 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.
bravo, corajoso; brave, corageous
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, do cruzamento de pravus e barbarus; sentido de corajoso, destemido
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Nicolás Bravob. 1786MXPresident of Mexico (1786-1854)
- Manuel Alvarez Bravob. 1902MXMexican photographer (1902–2002)
- Lola Álvarez Bravob. 1903MXMexican photographer (1903–1993)
- Cuauhtemoc Blanco Bravob. 1973MXMexican association football player and politician
- Janicza Bravob. 1981USAmerican writer, director, and photographer (born 1981)
- Raúl Bravob. 1981ESSpanish footballer
- Claudio Bravob. 1983CLChilean association football player
- Patrícia Mamonab. 1988PTnot in their usual namePortuguese athletics competitor
- Christian Cuevab. 1991PEnot in their usual namePeruvian association football player
- Ciara Bravob. 1997USAmerican actress
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)
Attested in 47 sources across 29 countries.
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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)
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 Bravo come from?
- from a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a fierce or violent man Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What does the name Bravo mean?
- In Spanish, fierce-tempered man, from Sp., Port, bravo fierce, violent (probably from L barbarus barbarian, ruffian; cf. Barb¬ ary).
- How do you pronounce Bravo?
- A machine transcription gives /bɾabo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Bravo have the most bearers?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted about 96 thousand people named Bravo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bravo.
- Where is Bravo most common?
- Bravo is densest in Ecuador, where the national register counts about 1 in 177 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Bravo?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 95,501 people named Bravo in 2024, about 1 in 177 residents.
- How common is Bravo compared with other names?
- In Ecuador, Bravo is the 16th most common surname of 34,511 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bravo?
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/bravoThe 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, “Bravo” — the 16th most common surname in Ecuador. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.