Cadena

surname · Latin script

Meaning: chain (series of interconnected rings or links usually made of metal)

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

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

Cadena is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • ECEcuador1 in 837(measured from records)
  • COColombia≈1 in 2.1K
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 8.5K

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)

≈23,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
319 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 837 (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CadenaLatin(measured from records)
КаденаCyrillic(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)

chain (series of interconnected rings or links usually made of metal)

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cadena 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 Cadena is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#297≈23,000 est.≈1 in 2.1K20Cadena149
EC Ecuador#16620,2021 in 83720KCadena77
US United States—11,5601 in 29K12KCadena319
PK Pakistan—≈5,400 est.≈1 in 44K—Cadena2
VE Venezuela#782≈3,400 est.≈1 in 8.5K—Cadena33
BO Bolivia—≈2,900 est.≈1 in 4K—Cadena33
ES Spain—2,3011 in 22K2.3KCadena107

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; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)

Cadena is also recorded as 4 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 Cädënä, Cãdênâ, Caedënae, Cädênä, Cadeña

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Cádena

  • Lao surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Ecuador

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Câdenä, Cadenä, Cädenä, Câdënä

  • Danish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Denmark, Spain, Ecuador

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Cådéna

42 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)

Cadena 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.

  • Rítmica

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

  • In Aragonese, chain

    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)

19201940196019802000Ozzie Cadena, b. 1924Raúl Araiza, b. 1935José Torres Cadena, b. 1952Dez Cadena, b. 1961Freddy Cadena, b. 1963Freddy Montaña, b. 1982Carlos Daniel Hidalgo, b. 1986Daniel Cadena, b. 1987Mabel Cadena, b. 1990

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 22 sources across 12 countries.

Official registers attesting Cadena
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202420K#212
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—20K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201012K#3,117
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202011K#3,102
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020009.1K#3,577
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—2.3K#2,160
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—2.3K#2,160
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1995371—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2008334—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1999325—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1966321—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2007320—

Reference works 3

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)

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

What does the name Cadena mean, and where does it come from?
chain (series of interconnected rings or links usually made of metal) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Cadena?
A machine transcription gives /kadena/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What are other forms of the name Cadena?
In the etymology graph, Candado is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Cadena have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 23 thousand people named Cadena in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cadena.
Where is Cadena most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cadena is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 837 people — even though Colombia holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cadena?
In Ecuador, the national register counted 20,202 people named Cadena in 2024, about 1 in 837 residents.
How common is Cadena compared with other names?
In Colombia, Cadena is the 297th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cadena?

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

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, “Cadena” — the 297th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cadena parses inside a full name →