Cortez
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a surname, variant of Cortés
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kortɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cortez 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.
- 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 Cortez 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 206 (inferred from the name graph)
101,694 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled 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)
a surname, variant of Cortés
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cortez 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 | 101,694 | 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 | 89,974as Cortes | 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 | 21,319as Cortes | 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)
Cortez is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
gentle, courteous
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Portuguese, Pre-reform spelling (used until 1943 in Brazil and 1911 in Portugal) of cortês.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Romanian, courteous, polite, kind
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)
- Ricardo Cortezb. 1900USAmerican actor (1900-1977)
- Stanley Cortezb. 1908USAmerican cinematographer (1908–1997)
- Freddie Gormanb. 1939USnot in their usual nameAmerican recording artist, songwriter and record producer
- Alberto Cortezb. 1940ARArgentine singer (1940-2019)
- Catherine Cortez Mastob. 1964USAmerican lawyer and politician (born 1964)
- Manuel Cortezb. 1979PTGerman actor
- Joana Cortezb. 1979BRBrazilian tennis player
- Bruno Cortêsb. 1987BRBrazilian association football player
- Cai Cortezb. 1988PHFilipina actress, comedian and model
- Kevin Rodríguezb. 2000ECnot in their usual nameEcuadorian footballer
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 30 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 102K | #310 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 96K | #327 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 77K | #367 |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 33K | #46 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 3.5K | #1,487 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 3.5K | #1,487 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1K | #465 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 3 | #113 |
| 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 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Cortez mean, and where does it come from?
- a surname, variant of Cortés Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Cortez?
- A machine transcription gives /kortɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Cortez 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 it is most often spelled cortez.
- How common is the name Cortez?
- In the United States, the national register counted 101,694 people named Cortez in 2010, about 1 in 3.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Cortez compared with other names?
- In the United States, Cortez is the 247th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cortez?
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/cortezThe 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, “Cortez” — the 247th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.