Herrera

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum)

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

/ereɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Herrera is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Nicaragua it is the 11th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 150(inferred from the name graph)
  • ECEcuador1 in 211
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 212

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.

United States (measured from records)

192,711 people, 2010

#204 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
498 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 117 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

HerreraLatin(measured from records)
ЭррераCyrillic(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)

habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Herrera 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 Herrera is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#407192,7111 in 1.7K193KHerrera498
AR Argentina#25172,6711 in 263173KHerrera162
CO Colombia#27≈160,000 est.≈1 in 303110Herrera220
VE Venezuela#30≈130,000 est.≈1 in 2121KHerrera131
PE Peru#40≈100,000 est.≈1 in 319304KHerrera141
EC Ecuador—80,2521 in 21180KHerrera107
CR Costa Rica—43,6701 in 11744K—128
NI Nicaragua#11≈41,000 est.≈1 in 150—Herrera68
SV El Salvador#50≈25,000 est.≈1 in 25626KHerrera94

192,711 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENIEC — DNI population names; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); INEC — civil registry names; 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)

Herrera is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname26 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Hërrërä, Herrerä, Hěrrĕră, Hërrêrä, Hërręrâ

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group
  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Peru

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Herrere, Herrère

  • Lao surname27 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Chile, Thailand

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Hërrërä, Hérrérá, H'Errera, Hërrëra, Herrerä

  • Indonesian surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, United States, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Hërrërä, Herrèra, Hęrręrą, Hërręrä

  • Swedish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Denmark, Sweden

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Hèrrêrå

75 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.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Herrera is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • habitational name from the Gascon form of Ferriere, a place in Pyrenees-Atlantique. The place name is derived from Latina/erraria ‘iron-mine’, ‘iron-forge’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In English, Jose Joaquin, Mexican general and

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In English, politician; province, Panama

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In Croatian, španjolski renesansni pjesnik ( Pjesan o pobjedi kod Lepanta )

    as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export

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)

175018001850190019502000José Antonio Páez, b. 1790Helenio Herrera, b. 1910Alberto Spencer, b. 1937Carolina Herrera, b. 1939Jean Reno, b. 1948Miguel Herrera, b. 1968Alfonso Herrera, b. 1983Héctor Moreno, b. 1988Ander Herrera, b. 1989Héctor Herrera, b. 1990

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)

FormalEstimado/a Herrera,Dear Herrera, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Herrera,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 48 sources across 28 countries.

Official registers attesting Herrera
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names2019304K#26
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010193K#129
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020187K#131
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—173K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000141K#175
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202480K#36
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—80K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—44K#44
SV El SalvadorEl Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived)—26K#53
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19951.6K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20091.5K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20071.4K—

Reference works 7

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 Herrera mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Herrera?
A machine transcription gives /ereɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What are other forms of the name Herrera?
In the etymology graph, Ferreira is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Herrera have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 193 thousand people named Herrera, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled herrera.
Where is Herrera most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Herrera is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 117 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Herrera?
In the United States, the national register counted 192,711 people named Herrera in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
How common is Herrera compared with other names?
In the United States, Herrera is the 407th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Herrera?

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

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, “Herrera” — the 407th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Herrera parses inside a full name →