Chaves
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: province of Tras-os-Montes, so called from L (aquis) Flaviis, the abl. case, originally used after a preposition, of aquae Flaviae ‘waters of Flavius'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/kɐvɛʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Chaves is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Angola it is the 99th most common surname.
- BRBrazil≈1 in 1.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- PTPortugal≈1 in 2.1K
- ESSpain1 in 4.5K
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.
- Brazil (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 282 (measured from records)
- 1 in 75 (inferred from the name graph)
≈160,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Portugal; Inquisition of Lisbon and Coimbra
Sources 1
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
How Chaves is read(measured from records)
Chaves is one spelling over 3 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.
- Portuguese56%
province of Tras-os-Montes, so called from L (aquis) Flaviis, the abl. case, originally used after a preposition, of aquae Flaviae ‘waters of Flavius'. The place was the site of sulphurous springs with supposedly health-giving properties, around which a settlement was founded in the ist cent, ad by the Emperor Vespasian.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- Spanish35%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Chaves in Spanish.
- English5.6%
A surname from Ibero-Romance.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
commune, Portugal
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Chaves 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #107 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | 116 | Chaves | 203 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 68,087 | 1 in 75 | 68K | — | — |
| AR Argentina | — | 20,660 | 1 in 2.2K | 21K | — | 2 |
| CO Colombia | — | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | 17 | — | 1 |
| ES Spain | — | 11,090 | 1 in 4.5K | 11K | Chaves | 115 |
| AO Angola | #99 | ≈6,400 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Chaves | 35 |
| PT Portugal | #141 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Chaves | 122 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 4,089 | 1 in 828 | 4.1K | — | — |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); 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); the co-datosgov-candidates register. 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)
Chaves is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Portugal; Inquisition of Lisbon and Coimbra
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, 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)
- José Francisco Chavesb. 1833USUnion United States Army officer (1833-1904)
- Aureliano Chavesb. 1929BRBrazilian politician (1929–2003)
- Manuel Chaves Gonzálezb. 1945ESSpanish politician
- Richard Chavesb. 1951USAmerican actor
- Rodrigo Chavesb. 1961CR49th president of Costa Rica
- Helena Carreirasb. 1965PTnot in their usual namePortuguese politician, academic and sociologist (born 1965)
- Soraia Chavesb. 1982PTModel and actress
- Frederico Chaves Guedesb. 1983BRBrazilian association football player (born 1983)
- Michael Chavesb. 1984USAmerican film director
- Esteban Chavesb. 1990CORoad racing cyclist
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 33 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 376K | #113 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 68K | #18 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 21K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 11K | #501 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 11K | #501 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 4.1K | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 17 | #99 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
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 Chaves mean?
- In Portuguese, province of Tras-os-Montes, so called from L (aquis) Flaviis, the abl. case, originally used after a preposition, of aquae Flaviae ‘waters of Flavius'.
- Where does the name Chaves come from?
- Portugal; Inquisition of Lisbon and Coimbra Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- How do you pronounce Chaves?
- A machine transcription gives /kɐvɛʃ/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- In which country does Chaves have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 162 thousand people named Chaves in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chaves.
- Where is Chaves most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Chaves is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 75 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Chaves?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 68,087 people named Chaves, about 1 in 75 residents.
- How common is Chaves compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Chaves is the 107th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chaves?
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/chavesThe 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, “Chaves” — the 107th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.