Cortes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: gentle, courteous
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/koɾtes/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cortes 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.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 239(measured from records)
- CLChile≈1 in 477
- COColombia≈1 in 490
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 Cortes 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)
- #232 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 465 (measured from records)
- 1 in 239 (inferred from the name graph)
101,694 named Cortez, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
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 Cortez in US United States, PH Philippines, SV El Salvador and 2 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)
gentle, courteous
Sources 1
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Attested across 17 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cortes 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #247 | 101,694as Cortez | 1 in 3.3K | 102K | Cortez | 465 |
| CO Colombia | #53 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 490 | 80 | Cortes | 192 |
| PH Philippines | #28 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Cortez | 137 |
| ES Spain | #45 | 89,974 | 1 in 556 | 90K | Cortes | 206 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Cortez | 27 |
| CL Chile | #39 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 477 | — | Cortes | 149 |
| SV El Salvador | #44 | ≈31,000 est. | ≈1 in 206 | 33K | Cortez | 68 |
| CR Costa Rica | #70 | 21,319 | 1 in 239 | 21K | Cortes | 87 |
| NI Nicaragua | #71 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 536 | — | Cortez | 41 |
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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Cortes is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, J. Hernan or Hernando, Spanish
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, parliament in Spain & Portugal
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, region, Honduras
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, conquistador
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Portuguese, plural of corte (“court”)
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)
- Yara Cortesb. 1921BRBrazilian actress (1921–2002)
- John Cortesb. 1953GBGibraltarian politician
- Alejandro Cortesb. 1955COtennis player
- Corinna Cortesb. 1961DKDanish-American computer scientist
- Jorge Díazb. 1962ESnot in their usual nameSpanish writer
- Sergio Cortesb. 1968CLtennis player
- Elder Herrerab. 1968COnot in their usual nameColombian racing cyclist
- Avernob. 1977MXnot in their usual nameMexican professional wrestler
- Franco El Gorilab. 1979USnot in their usual namePuerto Rican singer
- Eddy Alvarezb. 1990USnot in their usual nameAmerican short track speed skater and baseball 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)
Attested in 42 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 90K | #42 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 90K | #42 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 50K | #668 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 46K | #751 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 30K | #1,061 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 21K | #99 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 80 | #40 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Cortes mean, and where does it come from?
- gentle, courteous Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- How do you pronounce Cortes?
- A machine transcription gives /koɾtes/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Cortes have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 102 thousand people named Cortez, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Cortes most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cortes is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 239 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Cortes?
- In Spain, the national register counted 89,974 people named Cortes, about 1 in 556 residents.
- How common is Cortes compared with other names?
- In the United States, Cortes is the 247th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cortes?
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/cortesThe 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, “Cortes” — the 247th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.