Esperanza
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: from Latin spero ‘to hope’; from the root *spe-, ‘hope’
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/espeɾanθa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Esperanza is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. In El Salvador it is the 45th most common given name.
- COColombia≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 1.3K
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.4K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 347 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈41,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Colombia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
from Latin spero ‘to hope’; from the root *spe-, ‘hope’.
Sources 1
- Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
How Esperanza is read(measured from records)
Esperanza is one spelling over 2 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.
- Spanish77%
from Latin spero ‘to hope’; from the root *spe-, ‘hope’.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
hope, hopefulness
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English9.5%
yellow bells (Tecoma stans)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Esperanza 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | #169 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 16 | Esperanza | 132 |
| PH Philippines | #594 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Esperanza | 87 |
| ES Spain | #163 | 39,959 | 1 in 1.3K | 42K | Esperanza | 173 |
| US United States | — | 36,013 | 1 in 9.2K | 36K | Esperanza | 347 |
| PE Peru | #147 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Esperanza | 60 |
| EC Ecuador | #80 | 8,180 | 1 in 2.1K | 8.2K | Esperanza | 40 |
| SV El Salvador | #45 | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Esperanza | 30 |
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 — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry 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)
Esperanza 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.
hope; Ciudad de Mexico, Buenos Aires, Smyrna, Urla, Turkey, Campos, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Brasil
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In French, Origine espagnole, signifie « espérance ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Spanish virtue name meaning 'hope'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Esperanza López Mateosb. 1907MXMexican translator, political activist, syndicalist, and mountaineer (1907-1951)
- Esperanza Baurb. 1920MXMexican actress (1920–1961)
- Esperanza Royb. 1935ESSpanish actress
- Vickyb. 1947COnot in their usual nameColombian recording artist, singer (1947-2017)
- Esperanza Aguirre Gil de Biedmab. 1952ESSpanish politician and peeress
- Esperanza Elipeb. 1961ESSpanish actor
- Esperanza Pedreñob. 1974ESSpanish actor
- Esperanza Gomezb. 1980COColombian pornographic actress (born 1980)
- Esperanza Spaldingb. 1984USAmerican jazz bassist and singer (born 1984)
- Esperanza Americab. 1986USAmerican actress
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)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 71 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 42K | #109 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 40K | #202 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 36K | #1,128 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 8.2K | #246 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 188 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 116 | #1,128 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 30 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 16 | #105 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2002 | 5 | — |
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name 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 Esperanza mean, and where does it come from?
- from Latin spero ‘to hope’; from the root *spe-, ‘hope’. Recorded by Diccionario etimológico de nombres propios.
- Is Esperanza a male or female name?
- Esperanza is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What are other forms of the name Esperanza?
- In the etymology graph, Espérance and Sperantia are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Esperanza have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 41 thousand people named Esperanza in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled esperanza.
- How do you pronounce Esperanza?
- A machine transcription gives /espeɾanθa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Esperanza?
- In Spain, the national register counted 39,959 people named Esperanza, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
- How common is Esperanza compared with other names?
- In Colombia, Esperanza is the 169th most common given name of 106,067 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Esperanza?
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/esperanzaThe 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, “Esperanza” — the 169th most common given name in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.