Gallego
surname · Latin script
Meaning: region of Galicia in NW Spain, so called from L Gallaecia, unknown etymology
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɡaʎeɣo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gallego is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country, where it is the 86th most common surname.
- COColombia≈1 in 648(inferred from the name graph)
- ESSpain1 in 725
- UYUruguay1 in 3.9K
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
- 302 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 648 (inferred from the name graph)
≈76,000 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)
region of Galicia in NW Spain, so called from L Gallaecia, unknown etymology. Patr.: Galindez. 235 Gallen Gambe a deriv. of the tribal name Gallaeci, Callaeci, of unknown origin. The E European region of Galicia was Latinized into an identical form when it became part of the AustroHungarian Empire in the late i8th cent.; before that it had been the duchy of Galich (Pol. Halicz). Var.: Gallegos.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Gallego 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 | #86 | ≈76,000 est. | ≈1 in 648 | 38 | Gallego | 169 |
| ES Spain | #53 | 68,987 | 1 in 725 | 69K | Gallego | 236 |
| PH Philippines | #394 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Gallego | 78 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈8,900 est. | ≈1 in 30K | — | Gallego | 9 |
| AR Argentina | #542 | 7,482 | 1 in 6.1K | 7.5K | Gallego | 92 |
| UY Uruguay | #640 | 879 | 1 in 3.9K | 879 | Gallego | 33 |
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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Gallego 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.
In Spanish, region of Galicia in NW Spain, so called from L Gallaecia, a deriv. of the tribal name Gallaeci, Callaeci, of unknown origin. The E European region of Galicia was Latinized into an identical form when it became part of the AustroHungarian Empire in the late 18th cent.; before that it had been the duchy of Galich (Pol. Halicz). Var.: Gallegos. Cogns.: Port.: Galego. It.: Gallico.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In Spanish, ethnic name for someone from Galicia, Spanish gallego.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Asturian, neuter singular of gallegu
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)
- Justo Gallego Martínezb. 1925ESSpanish church builder (1925–2021)
- Fernando Guillén Gallegob. 1931ESactor (1931–2013)
- Américo Gallegob. 1955ARArgentine footballer
- Gina Gallegob. 1955USAmerican actress
- Ricardo Gallegob. 1959ESSpanish footballer
- Rubén Gallegob. 1968RURussian writer
- El Sol de Méxicob. 1970MXnot in their usual nameMexican singer and producer (born 1970)
- David Gallego Rodríguezb. 1972ESSpanish footballer
- Miryam Gallegob. 1976ESSpanish actress
- Ruben Gallegob. 1979USAmerican politician (born 1979)
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 35 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 69K | #60 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 69K | #60 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 7.5K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 879 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 38 | #78 |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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
- Where does the name Gallego come from?
- region of Galicia in NW Spain, so called from L Gallaecia, unknown etymology. Patr.: Galindez. 235 Gallen Gambe a deriv. of the tribal name Gallaeci, Callaeci, of unknown origin. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Gallego?
- A machine transcription gives /ɡaʎeɣo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Gallego mean?
- Recorded meaning: region of Galicia in NW Spain, so called from L Gallaecia, unknown etymology.
- In which country does Gallego have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 76 thousand people named Gallego in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gallego.
- How common is the name Gallego?
- In Spain, the national register counted 68,987 people named Gallego, about 1 in 725 residents.
- How common is Gallego compared with other names?
- In Colombia, Gallego is the 86th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gallego?
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/gallegoThe 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, “Gallego” — the 86th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.