Cortéz

surname · Latin script

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

Cortéz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In the Philippines it is the 28th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Spanish Cortez, variant of Cortés.

rarermore common
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 206(inferred from the name graph)
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 536
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.1K

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 Cortéz itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

101,694 people, 2010

#232 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
465 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 206 (inferred from the name graph)

El Salvador, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

CortesLatin(measured from records)
КортесCyrillic(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Cortez in US United States, PH Philippines, SV El Salvador and 2 more and Cortes in CL Chile, ES Spain, CO Colombia and 1 more.

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 Cortez, variant of Cortés.

Sources 2

  • Wiktionary
  • Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cortéz 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 Cortéz is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#247101,6941 in 3.3K102KCortez465
CO Colombia#53≈100,000 est.≈1 in 49080Cortes192
PH Philippines#28≈100,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Cortez137
ES Spain#4589,974as Cortes1 in 55690KCortes206
ID Indonesia—≈51,000 est.≈1 in 5.2K—Cortez27
CL Chile#39≈38,000 est.≈1 in 477—Cortes149
SV El Salvador#44≈31,000 est.≈1 in 20633KCortez68
CR Costa Rica#7021,319as Cortes1 in 23921KCortes87
NI Nicaragua#71≈12,000 est.≈1 in 536—Cortez41

101,694 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Cortez, Córtez, Côrtez, Cortêz, Cortèz

  • French surname9 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Cortez, Cortèz, Cortêz, Çortêz, Cörtez

  • Turkish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Türkiye, Philippines, Spain

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Cortez, Çörtëz, Çörtèz, Córtez, Cortêz

21 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)

1960198020002020Verónica Cortéz, b. 1963Nathalie Cortez, b. 1965Adolfo Menéndez, b. 1970José Cortéz, b. 1975Roberto Carlos Leyva, b. 1979Sonia Zepeda, b. 1981Francisco Cortéz, b. 1985Christian Vargas, b. 1989Ismael Cortéz, b. 2000Juan Cortéz, b. 2005

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 3 sources across 2 countries.

Reference works 1

  • 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 Cortéz mean, and where does it come from?
From Spanish Cortez, variant of Cortés. Recorded by Wiktionary and Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
In which country does Cortéz have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 102 thousand people named Cortéz, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cortez.
How common is the name Cortéz?
In the United States, the national register counted 101,694 people named Cortéz in 2010, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
How common is Cortéz compared with other names?
In the United States, Cortéz is the 247th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cortéz?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cort%C3%A9z

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, “Cortéz” — the 247th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cortéz parses inside a full name →